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.’‘They want the woman for themselves,’ Pagan said.Mallory nodded almost imperceptibly.He had the feeling that in this one tiny gesture he’d given away more than he ever intended.‘Who are these people, Mallory?’Mallory said nothing.He was conscious of how treachery was formed in layers, strata.He’d betrayed the Agency by aligning himself with Max Skidelsky.And now he was approaching another level, where he had the choice of betraying Skidelsky too.The trouble with betrayal was what it did to you, the bruises it inflicted on you, the way it blew a shifting unpredictable tempest through your own values.What values, Jimmy? he wondered.Do you have any left? His thoughts cluttered his head.He had collapses going on inside him.He felt dizzy.He listened to the rain fall in the shrubbery outside.The cleansing rain.He glanced at Pagan.‘In your shoes, Pagan, I’d walk away.’‘You’re not wearing my shoes,’ Pagan said.‘I’m thankful for any small mercy that comes my way.’Pagan rose, stepped across the room, and for a second Mallory had the feeling he was about to be struck.Nothing too savage, a quick punch in the gut, a flick of the pistol across his mouth, but Pagan didn’t touch him.‘My patience isn’t endless, Mallory.It has limits, and I’m approaching them, and I don’t honestly like the idea of losing it entirely, believe me.’Mallory wandered to the sofa, out of Pagan’s range, and sat down, looked inside his glass.What did it matter to him if this stubborn Englishman went out and got himself killed by Skidelsky’s people? What was one more death anyway? She stands in the doorway, that young face painted, the ridiculous prophylactic in her fingers, and she looks so damned innocent, so disturbingly innocent, and young enough to be your own fucking daughter, and now she’s a nightmare you have to carry around.He gazed at the photograph of his lost kids.Carrie would be thirteen now, Cindy eleven.He imagined what it would be like to sit down with them one day and tell them about his life and the things he’d done and see their expressions.How would they look at him? With understanding or condemnation? He doubted if he’d ever see them again anyhow, so the conjecture was purely a dry academic exercise.He drew a hand across his face in a weary manner.He said quietly, ‘My wife complained I gave too much of myself to my work.And she was right, Pagan.I was always going overseas, I was gone too long too often, and everything just evaporated in my absences.I’d come home to a house of strangers, and I’d feel … I guess the word is alienated.It’s a sad story, and it’s banal.Happens all the time.’Pagan was silent, tapping the barrel of his gun against the palm of his hand.Mallory couldn’t read his expression.The grey eyes were unresponsive.‘They’d send me to Paris.Rome.Athens.Istanbul.Anywhere you’d find old operatives from the former Soviet bloc.Guys with hot secrets to sell.Documents they wanted to trade in exchange for US residency.All these guys with pathetic expressions.Trouble is, while I was away strange things were going on behind my back, and I wasn’t paying close attention.My wife found a replacement, my marriage collapsed, and my country was falling to pieces.And one day I came home to an empty house and a sick nation.’‘The abandoned husband, the disillusioned patriot,’ Pagan remarked.‘That sums it up, Pagan.’ Mallory turned his face to Pagan, a quick little movement of the neck.He felt a small burst of hostility toward Pagan suddenly.Why should he tell this stranger anything? The guy was intruding on his life.‘Christ, Pagan.Why don’t you just do yourself a favour and walk straight out of here? Forget you ever saw me.’‘I think I’ll linger,’ Pagan said.He moved a little closer to the sofa.He gave Mallory the impression now of a man who was holding himself in check, energies only just repressed, coils about to unwind.Pagan said, ‘Besides, I’m interested in disillusioned patriots.How do they compensate?’How do they compensate? Mallory forced a weak smile.His feeling of animosity dispersed as if it were a vapour.He heard voices inside his head, a clamour of them, Skidelsky’s, his ex-wife’s, a kid crying out in a bedroom doorway – there was displacement going on inside his skull, discordant voices echoing in an empty auditorium.He got up and walked back to the liquor cabinet and filled his glass.‘There’s no real compensation, Pagan.I thought there might be.I guess I figured it all the wrong way.I’m not sure.Even now, I’m not sure.’‘Tell me how you figured it, Mallory.’Mallory ran a hand through his hair.Vodka was getting in the way of his thinking.Unfinished sentences floated in and out of his mind, explanations, justifications, things beyond the reach of his language.‘I’m not a bad man, Pagan.That’s how I assess myself.I’m not what you’d call a bad man.I just happen to be involved in …’‘In what?’Mallory paused.The precipice, he thought.The place where, without benefit of either parachute or safety-net, he could jump.Skidelsky’s face formed in his imagination.A warning frown behind the glasses, those clear eyes penetrating.What did he owe Max Skidelsky anyway? Put it into words, what did he owe? Skidelsky had filled certain gaps in his life.Skidelsky had given him a fragile sense of belonging to something.Max’s dreams were infectious, but none of them were real.He created illusions.He was setting the country right, and you wanted to believe him, god damn it, but he was a quack revivalist in a big tent making cripples think they could walk without crutches, except they could only ever manage a few halting steps before they collapsed, but that was enough for some people to believe in miracles.It was all deception, and Mallory was just another gullible cripple fooled and fuelled by a huckster’s enthusiasm.‘See, my trouble is I could never really see how the means justified the end.The others could.They managed the moral arithmetic of it all.Me, I always had problems with the numbers.Right from the start.’‘Tell me about the numbers,’ Pagan said.‘Some people had a good look round, Pagan.And they just didn’t like what they saw.They didn’t like the general drift of the country.They didn’t like the lack of focus.They didn’t like the way pessimism had replaced belief, the inability of cops to control the streets, the wholesale spread of guns, the cheapness of human life – the whole uphill struggle, the grind of keeping law and order, the breakdown in domestic security and intelligence that is supposed to be the reponsibility of the FBI [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]