One evening in late October, an email landed in Charlie’s in-box.
Guys, it began. I feel like a jackass, but if I didn’t send this email, Marjorie said she was going to do it for me. See below. There’s a dinner next month at which I’ll be making some remarks. The food will be terrible, you’ll need a tux, my speech will put you to sleep. Yeah, so, don’t all say yes at once.
Steve Raines was one of Charlie’s oldest friends. He was being honored by Mount Sinai with a career-capping award for distinguished service as their chief cardiac surgeon: dinner at the Plaza in New York City, black-tie dress, big-name donors. Charlie saw right through the false modesty of the email. Raines was proud, rightfully so. For this reason, despite his lack of appetite for tuxedos and a chicken-or-steak banquet, Charlie knew he had to say yes.
On that November day, driving up I-95, he tried to remember the last time he was in New York. Last year? The year before that? When Amanda was little, he did this drive all the time. Friday evenings on the sidewalk outside Helen’s apartment, their daughter running toward Charlie with an enormous grin, her backpack flapping against her shoulders. And then, on Sunday afternoons, the reverse, Amanda running back to her mother’s arms. At the time, those handoffs had been acutely painful reminders of what he no longer had. But the years had softened the memories, and now they filled him with nostalgia.
When Amanda grew up, he and Helen had less reason to interact. They spoke on the phone once in a while, but that was it. Driving through the Lincoln Tunnel, he was struck with a sudden desire to see her. Probably she was too busy. Probably she would make up an excuse, even if she wasn’t. But what did he have to lose? After he checked into his hotel in Midtown, and hung his tuxedo in the bathroom, running the shower to help loosen the wrinkles, he dialed her number. She picked up on the second ring.
“Are you kidding?” she said. “Of course I want to see you, Charlie. How’s tomorrow afternoon? You can come over for coffee.”
And so there he was, knocking on her door, holding a bouquet of dahlias. When Helen opened the door, he thought: She’s exactly the same. Her green eyes, her crooked smile, her unchanged Helen-ness. She was as beautiful as ever, and yet the beauty registered in a different way. It used to make him feel possessive. Now he merely thought: How strange that I shared a life with this woman, once upon a time.
“Want the tour?” she said, ushering him inside. The apartment was bright and airy, with high ceilings and built-in bookshelves. Helen and Sidney were students when they got married—she at Hunter’s School of Education, he at Columbia Business School—but those shoestring days were a distant memory. Sidney did some kind of work in finance (Charlie was never sure exactly what), and Helen, after many years as a public school teacher, was now the head of an education nonprofit. Charlie took it all in. “This is nice,” he said. “I mean it. A lot of places around here are kind of…”
“Stuffy? Chintzy? Toile curtains and mallard ducks?”
He smiled. “You always did hate my mother’s taste.”
“It’s all relative.” She gestured at the Eames chair in the corner. “Like that chair. I love it. Some would call it hideous. And they wouldn’t be wrong! It took me a while to learn that lesson. Let’s go to the kitchen. I’ll put these in water. They’re lovely, Charlie. You really didn’t have to.”
There was coffee in the coffeepot, a plate of cookies on the table, still warm, smelling of cinnamon. Helen opened a cabinet and stood on her tiptoes, straining to reach a vase. Charlie hesitated for a moment—was it weird?—and then stepped forward. “Here,” he said, plucking it from the top shelf, handing it to her.
No, it wasn’t weird. None of it was weird. Helen seemed to feel the same way. “I’m really glad you called,” she said. “This is nice. We should have done this a long time ago. You know, whenever I ask how you’re doing, Amanda just says ‘He’s good.’ She never goes into detail.”
“If it’s any consolation,” he said, “she does the exact same to me.”
“She still calls you at four o’clock on the dot?”
“On the dot. And you at five o’clock?”
“Isn’t it kind of amazing?” Helen said. “She was such a head-in-the-clouds kid. Lost in her own little world. And look at her now. So diligent. So punctual!”
“I guess she knows that, by now, we’d worry if she didn’t call.” He shook his head, recognizing his mistake. “I shouldn’t say ‘we.’ I’m just speaking for myself.”
“No, you’re not. I agree entirely.” She smiled. “She’s a good girl, Charlie.”
“She’s the best.”
Helen lifted the coffeepot. He nodded in response, and she refilled his cup. “You saw her over the summer? When she was back?”
“Briefly. We had dinner. I think it was just before she came up to see you.”
“Right.” A wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows. “About that.”
Charlie had just picked up another cookie, but now he set it back down. “Did something happen?”
“I was debating whether to say anything. When I saw her in July, it seemed like she was under a lot of pressure. Stressed. More than usual. And then she was…” She paused, squinting at him. “She was asking me some questions. About Helsinki.”
“Huh.” His throat was dry. “Helsinki? About anything specific?”
“About why you left. She was skeptical, I guess, that it was entirely your decision. She seems to think there was something else to it. And I told her I didn’t know. Because that’s the truth, Charlie. I never really knew.”
He swallowed. “Helen, I—”
She held up her hands. “I’m not trying to make you feel bad. Really! It was a long time ago. Neither of us needs to dredge up the past. But maybe Amanda feels differently. Maybe she’s trying to understand something. Which is why I mention it. You two have always had a good relationship.” Her voice softened. “She should be going to you with those questions. Not me. So, maybe, next time you talk, you can open that door for her. Let her know that she can come to you with questions.”
“Right. Uh, yeah. Sure.”
Helen gazed at him with what felt like pity. He’d been wrong, then. He did have something to lose: his dignity. His heart was starting to race. It was the sugar, the caffeine, the everything. “Well.” He stood abruptly, chair scraping against the floor. “I should go.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I’ve stayed too long. Thank you for the coffee. It was really nice to see you, Helen.”
In the hallway, he jabbed the button for the elevator. Jabbed it again, again, again. Downstairs, the doorman offered to hail him a taxi. Truthfully, he had never liked New York. Had never liked the elevators, the subways, the airshafts, the sidewalks. He dreaded the idea of his postage-stamp hotel room. You couldn’t breathe in there. Charlie needed to breathe. Then it occurred to him. “No,” he said. “No taxi. I’m going to walk.”
Divine intervention: Maurice Adler lived just a few blocks away. And Maurice, who knew the truth about Helsinki, would know exactly what to do.
January 1987. In the wintertime, the plows that cleared the Helsinki streets brought their drifts of snow to Fastholma, a quiet wooded area just outside the city. The road to the safe house wound past the tall white piles, icy remnants of which would speckle the woods long into the summer.
Charlie arrived to find the lights already on. Maurice was inside, brewing the tea, setting the stage for their guest, the wealthy Afghan businessman whom the Americans were attempting to woo. Maurice had flown in from Paris to act as the intermediary. “How much time?” Charlie asked, stamping the snow from his boots.
“Five minutes. You’re cutting it too close.”
“The roads were slippery.”
Maurice pulled aside the curtain, checking to make sure Charlie had parked behind the house. Charlie rolled his eyes. “You act like I’ve never done this before.”
“Upstairs,” Maurice said. “Now.”
Charlie chalked Maurice’s terse mood up to stress. The target that night was an important one. The Afghan businessman traveled frequently for work, moving easily, and usefully, through information-rich expat communities. He’d been roped into working for the KhAD, the Afghan secret police, who relayed everything to the KGB. He was unhappy with this arrangement. Unhappy enough to turn to the Americans? Maybe. Maurice Adler had been brought in to transform that maybe into a yes.
Charlie listened from upstairs. As the evening went on, the Afghan grew more relaxed. He and Maurice talked about things that had nothing to do with the matter at hand: their childhoods, their families, their faiths. Maurice had the gift, rare and unteachable, of finding common ground with anyone. Eventually he announced that he was going to make more tea. This was Charlie’s cue to come downstairs.
The Afghan, man of the world that he was, was unsurprised by Charlie’s appearance. They began to review the particulars; the first order of business was establishing how they would next get in touch. An hour later, promises made, the Afghan was driving back to his hotel in Helsinki. Watching his taillights disappear into the dark forest, Charlie sighed with relief. It was the rare recruitment that had gone right.
Maurice turned to Charlie. “What’s going on with you?”
“What? I thought that went well.”
“I mean last night. What on earth was that about?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That ridiculous coughing fit,” Maurice said. “What was that?”
Whenever Maurice was in town visiting, Helen made a point of cooking an especially elaborate dinner. The night before, she had pulled out all the stops: beef Wellington, mashed potatoes, treacle tart. “I don’t know why,” she’d said. “But I just have this thing for England. My Irish ancestors would be so ashamed.”
Maurice sipped his port, then said, “Ashamed or not, that was sublime, Helen.”
“I love beef Wellington. It’s not exactly au courant, is it? But it’s so elegant. And yet also comforting. Good lord, Grandma Dennehey must be rolling in her grave.”
“Maybe you need a trip to England.”
“That’s a good idea, actually. Why not?” Helen turned to Charlie, smiled. “Fancy a holiday, darling?”
Her mock accent wasn’t very good, but it was enough to ring a bell in his guilty subconscious. Charlie thought of Mary, and he started to cough. It escalated, getting so bad that he had to excuse himself. “Sorry,” he croaked, hurrying away. “Down the wrong pipe.” When he returned to the table, he avoided Helen’s eye. She didn’t seem to make anything of it, but apparently Maurice had.
“I was just coughing,” he insisted. “That was it.”
“You cough when you’re scared.”
“It wasn’t—”
“What are you doing, Charlie? You’re lying about something. So I’ll ask you again, and I will also ask that you show me this modicum of respect. We’ve always trusted each other. If we don’t trust each other, what good is this?”
Lying? He wasn’t lying. He didn’t like that word. Months into the affair, and Charlie had become expert at the cognitive dissonance. It was the same as any other operational cover. When he was with Mary, that was just one version of himself. Anyway, he was going to end it soon. And until he did, it was kinder to keep Helen in the dark. There were barriers between Charlie’s many selves. The firmest barrier was that which separated the husband of Helen from the lover of Mary. “I don’t know what you’re getting at,” Charlie said.
Maurice stared at him. He said: “There’s another woman.”
“Of course there isn’t,” he said automatically.
Then, silence. And in the silence, Charlie felt the clarifying possibilities of confession. There’s another woman. It was the world’s most predictable error. Charlie had fucked up, but look: so had millions of other people. And their lives went on. Maybe telling the truth would be a relief. So he swallowed, and said: “I mean. Yes. There is.”
“How long?” Maurice asked.
“April. Well, February. Technically.”
“What’s her name?”
“Mary. She’s English.”
“Ah,” he said. “And how did you meet?”
“At the grocery store. We always did our shopping at the same time.”
The expression on Maurice’s face suddenly changed.
“Really?” Charlie said. “It’s that shocking that I actually do the grocery shopping?”
“How much does she know about you?”
“Nothing. She thinks I’m a diplomat at the embassy.”
“Bullshit.”
“She’s just a secretary, Maurice.”
“Bullshit,” he repeated. “Have the favors started yet?”
“The favors?”
“A phone number. A name. Something that seems perfectly innocuous, but enough to—”
“Come on. I know how it works.”
“Apparently you don’t. A pretty young woman just happens to run into you in the grocery store, and you aren’t even skeptical?”
Charlie felt his heart thumping. “You’re being paranoid.”
“I’m being rational.”
“But how do you—”
“Listen to me, Charlie. You have to come clean. Beg Helen for another chance. Beg the agency for another chance. That’s the only way through this.”
“But I haven’t—”
“Eliminate any chance of blackmail. That’s the only way.”
Maurice was overreacting. He was definitely overreacting. Mary? A spy? It rewound through Charlie like a reel of film. Her ailing mother in England. The postmarks on the envelope. Brixton, London, SW9. Her addiction to PG Tips, her suitcase stuffed full of tea after her most recent trip home. Proof, all of it. The plane ticket from that same trip, LHR to HEL, sitting on her kitchen counter. Her fixation on Princess Diana, her ever-replenished supply of tabloid gossip. She was English, through and through.
Wasn’t she?
His mouth opened and closed in silence. His neurons drowning in panic. His pulse racing, his skin sheened with sweat. This kind of visceral reaction wouldn’t be happening if Charlie didn’t know, on some level, with just as much certainty as Maurice himself, that Mary had been playing him all along.
Maurice could see what was happening. With utter calm, like a doctor issuing a prescription, he told him precisely what to do. Write down a record of everything he and Mary had discussed. Tell Jack and take whatever punishment he issued. Tell Helen and do the same. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but he would be okay. Charlie nodded. He felt twisted with shame, but if anyone was going to catch him in the lie, he was glad it was Maurice.
Because they had to stagger their departures, Charlie stayed in the safe house for a while after Maurice left. It was so obvious, now. Incredible, actually, that he hadn’t figured it out on his own. At least Helen didn’t have to know of his humiliating idiocy. Nor did Jack. He would tell them that he had pieced it together himself, the truth about Mary. Charlie tidied up the house, straightening the pillows on the couch, washing the dishes in the kitchen. It was as he started to turn off the lights that he thought of the switch in the closet.
The switch that controlled the microphone, hidden in the wall, which connected to the tape recorder. The agency liked to have records of conversations like the recruitment of the Afghan businessman. The switch had been turned on. Of course it had; Maurice wouldn’t have forgotten. It had remained on this whole time.
He imagined Jack listening to that tape, hearing for himself the extent of Charlie’s stupidity, the depths of his denial. If the misadventure with Mary didn’t kill his career, that sure would.
But what if there was no tape? If you wanted real privacy in the safe house, you turned off the recorder. You weren’t supposed to, but sometimes people did it. In the closet, Charlie turned off the switch. He rewound the tape, found the moment when the Afghan left, paused it. His finger hovered over the Erase button.
He would come clean. Wasn’t that what mattered?
Charlie pressed Erase.
At first, driving away from the safe house, he felt relieved. Thank God he’d remembered about the microphone. The roads were icy, and the darkness was dense. Snowflakes caught in the beams of his headlights. He drove carefully. On the road ahead, a shape emerged from the forest. Charlie pressed the brake and the car eased to a stop. The animal stepped forward, into the light. It was a reindeer. They never came this far south, this close to the city, and yet there it was. The fur glazed with white snow. The antlers like curls of calligraphy. The whole thing like magic.
I wish Helen could see this, he thought.
Helen. Her green eyes flecked with gold; her wryly crooked smile. The mother of his child. How could he have done this to her? She was too good for him. He knew that; she knew that; the whole world knew that. But this would make it too stark to ignore. If he told her, she would leave him. Simple as that.
Well, of course. An unbidden voice. A voice that belonged to his cruelest self. That’s why you erased the tape.
The reindeer had disappeared, swallowed again by the black winter forest. The snow was falling faster.
You lied to Maurice, the voice said. And he believed it. Take a bow, Charlie. You must be better at this than you think.
There had to be another way out. What had he given her, anyway? A little bit of gossip. Some name-dropping here and there. Nothing. It was nothing.
So the next day, in his gentlest tone, he told her it was over. Mary sat on the futon, blinking at him. “You can’t do this,” she said.
“I’m sorry, baby. But I have a wife. A child. I have to do the right thing.”
She blinked again. Then she said: “Well, I suppose I should congratulate you.”
This gave him a bad feeling. Was she being sarcastic?
“On finally figuring it out, I mean. I’ll be honest, darling. I was beginning to wonder.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he blustered.
“Charlie, sweetheart. It’s okay. This needn’t be so dramatic. You’re only seeing it now, but it’s been true all along. Nothing has to change between us.”
She smiled. She was playing with him. She was enjoying this. He felt a surge of anger. “Fuck you.”
“Well, yes.” She laughed. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“You don’t have anything on me!” he shouted. “Just leave me the fuck alone.” Then he stormed out and slammed the door.
The anger felt good in the moment, but the hangover wasn’t worth it. That raw outburst had only revealed to her just how scared he really was. It was only a matter of time until Mary took advantage of that fear to get her way.
It happened a few days later. Coming home from work, he spotted them outside their building. Helen, holding Amanda’s hand. Amanda, gazing up at the strange woman. And Mary, gazing back at her. Helen was the first of the trio to spot Charlie. “Good timing,” she called out. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
She had been putting up these flyers, Helen explained. They had gotten to talking.
“I’ve been working as an au pair,” Mary said, with a saccharine smile. “But my family is leaving, so I’m looking for a new position. And I’d heard there were some lovely American families in this area. And lovely American girls with lovely names like Amanda.”
“Mommy,” Amanda whispered. “She sounds like Mary Poppins.”
“I wish we could help you out,” Helen said, ignoring Amanda’s tugging hand. “But I’m home with her all day. I don’t work.” She shot Charlie a look. “Most of the embassy wives don’t. You might have better luck in a different building.”
“Well, if you ever need a babysitter, or that sort of thing, then I—”
“We’re fine,” Charlie interrupted. “We already have a sitter.”
Helen said to Mary: “Yes. Of course. We’ll take your number. It’s always good to have another option.” Several minutes later, when they were back inside the apartment, she said caustically: “It wouldn’t have killed you to be polite. Isn’t that part of your job? Being good with strangers? Hello? Charlie. Are you even listening to me?”
But he couldn’t hear anything Helen was saying. Coming after his wife? Coming after his daughter? This anger had a different quality from his panicked shouts. This anger burned steadier, stronger. He would go see Mary that night. He would make it crystal fucking clear. She was going to blackmail him into cooperating? Make him dance like some demented puppet? Fine. Fine. But over his dead body would she touch Helen and Amanda.
Maurice opened the front door, surprised to see him. “Charlie!” he said. “I didn’t even know you were in New York.”
“It was last-minute. A thing for a friend. And then I was in the neighborhood—seeing Helen, actually—and thought I’d stop by. Hope that’s okay.”
They sat in the living room, where Mozart was playing and a fire was burning in the fireplace. Surely Maurice could tell something was wrong. Surely the anxiety radiated from Charlie like a strong odor. And yet, so much time had passed. They weren’t as close as they had once been. No longer could they immediately say to the other: You’re acting strange. The clock ticked on the mantel. With a slightly stiff politeness, Maurice said: “So. How is Helen?”
Charlie shifted in his seat, feeling guilty for what he was about to do. Maurice had lived in this apartment, the parlor level of an old town house on East Seventy-First Street, for three decades. The décor never changed. The brocade sofa, the oriental rugs, the silver samovar, the perpetual smell of woodsmoke. This current incarnation of Maurice Adler was also the longest-lasting: in this life he was a philosophy professor at Hunter College, the genteel dinner party guest, the charming older gentleman. But Charlie was about to blow up Maurice’s quiet afternoon and shove that incarnation aside. What he needed right now was the younger man, the man with sharper edges, with harder clarity.
“Well.” Charlie coughed. “It’s not Helen I came to talk to you about. It’s Amanda.”
Maurice lifted an eyebrow. “Is she okay?”
“I’m guessing you heard about her promotion, right? Helen probably told you. Station chief at age forty.” Despite everything, he still felt a glow of pride. “That’s sort of how this whole thing began. I mean, as far as I can tell.”
Charlie explained. How Amanda’s promotion came directly on the heels of Senator Vogel’s death; how Jenny Navarro found the papers in Vogel’s office and gave those papers to Charlie; how Charlie had given those papers to Amanda in turn, requesting to be left out of it; and how Amanda was now asking exactly the questions he feared her asking. “About Helsinki,” he said. “About what really happened.”
Maurice furrowed his brow. “You can’t be particularly surprised by this development.”
“But she’s—”
“Your daughter is one of the youngest station chiefs in history. A person doesn’t get there without a sizable degree of ambition.”
“But she wouldn’t—”
“Wouldn’t what?” Maurice sounded impatient. Irritated, even. “Wouldn’t disobey you? Wouldn’t prioritize the investigation over your wishes? Charlie, you had to know this was a possibility. More than a possibility. A likelihood.”
His cheeks flushed. “I just… I thought I’d have more time. To figure out what to say.”
“Well, you don’t.”
“I need help, Maurice. Please. I need a plan. You’re the only person I can talk to about these things.”
“Amanda is my goddaughter.”
“I know that.”
“I take that very seriously.”
“I know you do.”
“And what do you even want? In an ideal world, how do you see this ending?”
“I guess… I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”
Maurice frowned. “Well, Charlie. Think about it. I’m going to make some tea.”
He retreated into the kitchen, from which Charlie heard the water splashing, gas stove clicking, dishes clattering. The sounds had a Pavlovian effect, plunging him into a deep chamber of memory. In 1989, right after Helen left for good, Maurice came to stay for a while. He was on summer break from his teaching job in Paris. They were roommates in Helsinki for the next few months. Maurice cooked for Charlie; he cleaned for Charlie; he helped him come up with a plan while making endless cups of tea. He had stuck with him, even in the shit. He had been a good friend. Charlie had trusted him with his life.
Maurice returned with a tray of tea and cookies. Charlie took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. “Here’s what I think. Amanda is going to find out about Särrkä eventually. That’s fine. I was desperate, and deceitful, but there could have been lots of reasons for that. Right?”
Maurice’s gaze slipped into the middle distance. Eyes narrowed into darts. This was his thinking face.
“I mean.” Charlie sat up, growing more confident. “Who else knows? Me and you, and Jack and Mary. And Jack died in 2005. And Mary died on Särrkä.” He drank his tea to suppress the tickle in his throat. “If I don’t tell Amanda, and you don’t tell her…”
“But Mary could have told others before she died. She told at least one person. Somebody gave your name to Bob Vogel.” Maurice squinted at him. “And you have nothing to do with this scheme Vogel uncovered?”
“Nothing. I swear, Maurice, nothing.”
“So the first question is who gave Vogel your name. I wonder…” He shook his head. “But no. That’s probably too neat.”
“What is?”
“We can deduce that Amanda got a tip about Vogel. Yes? But was the person who tipped her also the person who warned Vogel about you? But, you see, this would assume they went to Amanda because they know Amanda is your daughter. Which assumes that they wanted this to happen. Which means this whole thing is designed for the express purpose of trapping you, and trapping Amanda, in this nasty situation.” He paused. “Which isn’t impossible.” Another pause. “But is it likely? Would that really be their objective?”
Maurice descended into silent thought. The clock kept ticking. Finally, he sighed and said: “Well, I suppose that’s the only place to start. How, specifically, did Amanda find out about the Vogel assassination? How much did she know? You know Osmond Brown, don’t you? I think you should ask him to a friendly lunch.”
“On what pretext?”
Maurice gave a terse laugh. “Isn’t this what you once did for a living, Charlie?” he said. “I think it’s time for you to resurrect those skills.”