If there was no possible way to hide my pregnancy, neither could I take the chance Kemp might discover the identity of the father. I told him the baby was the parting gift of someone who broke up with me because I wouldn’t abort. Though he seemed surprised, he didn’t argue with my decision to keep the child.
“Odd. I never thought of you as a mother. Oh, well. I imagine we’ll have to keep you more or less out of harm’s way until you deliver.” Initially, his concern surprised me, until I realized he was simply being practical. Between physical and emotional changes, he didn’t want to take any chances.
He didn’t refer to my condition again.
Brian took the opportunity to bow out as my instructor. He explained to Kemp he had other clients and prior commitments. He even noted I seemed too occupied to focus on my studies, a ploy I found breathtaking in its audaciousness. I’m glad I didn’t hear their exchange. I would have been seized by a fit of hysterical laughing.
During my pregnancy, I continued to work for both sides of the business. I developed security plans. I traveled as required to meet clients. Sometimes I served as a courier, carrying papers or other small items on behalf of Kemp’s underworld interests. I didn’t have to refuse any elimination work; I wasn’t given any.
I still hoped to be on the road as close to my due date as possible, have the baby abroad, report it stillborn, and send the child to live with Brian’s mother for a year. The separation would be hard on all of us, but I’d be occupied. I'd have my work and my new assignment on behalf of Brian’s Interpol team.
Brian, my husband! The thought sent shivers up and down my spine.
All that preparation ended up wasted. I nearly had the baby in the back of a taxicab on Christmas Eve after a particularly grueling trip. It was a false labor, but I stayed home after that. The holidays provided a convenient excuse. Brian, who had arranged for me to deliver at a private hospital, got in just after Christmas. On December 31, 1985, a healthy baby boy we named Michael arrived just about on time. The doctor joked about our little tax deduction. Would that our lives had been that simple.
In the absence of GPS, Kemp couldn’t easily track me. He wouldn't know whether I was suffering through a pregnancy gone wrong or delivering my firstborn son not fifteen blocks from the office. He had spies, of course. So did we, which is how we knew he was in London at the time. He likely relied on local underlings who weren’t expending much effort monitoring the activities of a pregnant security manager, even if they suspected I worked in another capacity.
We left the hospital after three days and moved to my apartment. There we lived as a family for another week and a half. Brian took care of everything. Someone brought food. Someone else kept a lookout and collected my mail, mostly sympathy cards from coworkers who couldn’t have known how happy I was. My husband occasionally slipped out. I stayed where I was with the new man in my life.
My employer called once and left a message on my answering machine absolving me of any need to phone him back. At the end of the ten-day period, Brian took little Michael out of my arms and across the Atlantic to his grandmother while I went back to work and tried to push motherhood into its own hidden compartment. The feeling was nothing short of awful. My body ached. My heart ached.
A year passed, an entire year, in which I lived my multiple lives as corporate consultant on security issues, paid assassin, spy for Interpol, and secret wife and mother. Brian had already decided he would tell only one person at M16 what I really did for Victor Kemp. Even that presented a risk.
Brian’s decision brought up another problem I faced, exacerbated no doubt by fluctuating hormones and my new role as a mother. I was panicked at the thought of resuming my work as Kemp’s killer.
“What if one of my targets turns out to be a double agent or someone working undercover for Interpol?”
I’d never allowed myself to think in those terms, never considered that the mark wasn’t in some way responsible for being in my sightlines. It was a way of maintaining my equilibrium; blame the victim. Moral deficiency or survival technique, it didn’t used to matter. Now it did.
“It’s very unlikely that would happen, darling. Besides, you’re only going to be at this another year or so. Then we’ll pull you out and go somewhere as far away from Victor Kemp as possible.”
My employer inquired solicitously about my health immediately upon my return, then went back to being his usual brusque self. If he suspected something was different about me, he never let on. Perhaps he assumed any changes were temporary, owing to typical female challenges. Not that he possessed anything remotely resembling empathy. I was simply a prized asset, and he wanted me working at capacity.
He gave me another three weeks of deskwork and sent me to a meeting in Zurich. My sorrow trailed me everywhere like a shadow.
“She lost her child,” I heard colleagues whispering. Indeed, I had.
Everything returned to normal, meaning I went back to playing the leading role in a production whose ending I couldn’t foresee. I worked diligently and kept social interactions to a minimum. Brian and Michael commanded my emotional reserves, even in absentia. At that, I had to keep thoughts about them in their own inviolate space if we hoped to survive.
In early March of 1987, I made my way from London, where I’d gone on business, to Brussels for a belated birthday celebration for Michael. Under the watchful eyes of a few family friends, a group of one-year-olds frolicked in late-winter sun, along with Michael’s two older cousins. I couldn’t take my eyes off my petit chou or sweetheart, as his grandmère called him. He looked just like his father, except his hair was more umber than red. He had my mother’s blue eyes. Like Brian, he laughed easily and displayed endless curiosity about the world around him. He appeared fearless. I wanted him to stay that way.
Brian took me aside during the birthday party. “I need to move Mamà and Michael. They’re not safe here.”
It was as if a hand—five blunt fingers topped by beautifully manicured nails—had reached inside my chest to squeeze my heart.
“Victor knows.” I stated this as fact. Brian’s curt nod made me catch my breath.
“I don’t care what it takes to keep them safe—to keep you safe. Do it.”
He promised to call me in exactly two weeks. When the date came and went and I didn’t hear from him, I willed myself to remain calm. I could do calm, I reasoned. Two more days passed. I called Brian. A recorded message politely informed me the number was no longer in service.
Five more days went by. Nothing.
One week after the call that didn’t take place, Kemp invited me out to lunch. It was a lovely New York day, just a hint of spring in the air. Over yet another expensive meal I could neither smell nor taste, he chatted about inconsequential nothings. His wife had decided to redecorate the flat; his daughter adored her school in Switzerland.
“Family is so important, isn’t it?” he continued. “Speaking of which, did you hear about your former teacher, Brian?” Kemp flicked his brittle glance in my direction before returning to his steak Diane.
I grasped my knife so hard my knuckles turned white. I didn’t think I could answer, so I shook my head and moved my hand under the table.
“He became a family man, married with an infant son. Imagine that! They lived somewhere in Belgium. Which was his birthplace, as I recall.” Kemp’s attention was on his food, yet I felt myself being watched.
“Imagine that.” I wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“Well, we just received news of a horrifying event.” He paused, studying the carved platinum ring he wore on his right hand. I’d always wondered about it. Wedding band? Friendship ring? Visual reminder of a blood oath taken by a band of fellow evildoers?
“It seems there was an accident. I believe he was with his young son and the boy’s grandmother when their vehicle crashed near the Belgian/French border. The car went off the side of the road, down an embankment, and burst into flames. Just like that. No one survived.” He shook his large head. “Such a tragedy. I don’t know how they made any identification at all. Apparently, the wife wasn’t with them. I can’t guess how it must feel to have one’s entire family suddenly wiped out like that.”
He cut a tiny piece of meat and inserted it surgically into his mouth.
“To love so deeply is to risk so much heartache. Don’t you agree?”
He’d been looking at his plate. Now he brought his icy eyes up to mine to see if I would react. I struggled to keep my face a blank. I didn’t even blink. Beneath the tablecloth, my hand held the knife as if it were a sword.
“I wouldn’t know,” I managed to say.
We locked onto each other, his wintry gaze challenging the flame he must have seen in mine. Time passed: a thousand years or a few seconds. Then he smiled, all teeth and no warmth.
“My goodness, death and grief are not really appropriate topics for lunch, are they? I sometimes forget myself. Hazards of the profession, I’m afraid. You should eat your food before it gets cold.”
My searing fury disappeared, replaced by a cold resolve as powerful as anything I’d ever experienced. I threw my anger into one of my many compartments, hidden but not forgotten, and I allowed myself to become as hard as my antagonist. If I ever had a soul, it shriveled in that moment. My heart closed. I assessed my odds of success should I jump across the table and thrust the knife into his chest. Not good. Kemp undoubtedly had guards posted at the restaurant perimeters. I couldn’t turn my cutlery against myself, either. Too dramatic. I’d never give him the satisfaction.
I think I muttered something about how sad the world could be, and we moved on.
For the rest of the interminably long luncheon, I pretended to eat. I listened, I responded; I behaved as if I was with a decent human being, not the beast who’d ordered the death of my loved ones.
When we got back to the office, I ducked into the ladies’ room and threw up. I went back to my desk, finished the workday, and went home. In my apartment that night, the explosion or collapse I expected didn’t take place. No howling like a banshee, no punching the walls until my fists bled. I didn’t pick up a rifle and head for a high place so I could randomly shoot people. I slept without dreaming for a few hours. The next day I went to work. And the next and the next, for nearly two more decades.
I should have gone insane. I almost did on several occasions. I wanted to leave him. Actually, I wanted to kill him or hurt him as terribly as he had hurt me.
I did none of those things. I contended with my pain and my rage. I had no choice. He watched me like a hawk, at once secure in his power yet wary I might turn on him. My strength came from not doing what he expected. If I'd really thought about how long it might take to get free of him, I might not have made it. I didn’t think about it. I focused on the tasks in front of me. Tunnel vision.