“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Now, there is another possible motive. Violet. I’ve seen the way you look at her. Not that I blame you.” He says, in a silky voice, provocative: “Trust me, lad, she’s even better than you’ve dreamed.”
A violent spasm of arms and legs. “Leave her out of this!”
“Ah! So we have a confession of something, in any case.” Lionel digs a little deeper into the small of Henry’s back, wanting to punish him for his thoughts, for the images of Violet that must lie in his male imagination. The anguish of Henry’s cry soothes his rage. Just. “So. Now that we have your hopeless yearning for Violet sorted out, let’s discuss your plans for her suitcase. You were intending to deliver it to the consulate as planned, were you not?”
“Of course!”
“Because we are all on the same side, here. Americans and British. We both want to prevent a war, don’t we?”
Henry mutters something into the dirt.
“What’s that, Mortimer? I can’t quite hear you.”
“I said, fucking pacifist.”
“Ah! That’s better. What I thought you said.” Lionel’s mouth tastes of copper. He must have bitten his tongue at some point, or else Henry’s elbow has knocked him about more firmly than he thought. His face is such a mass of bruises already, he can’t tell. “Let me guess. You’re among those civilians who have never worn a uniform, never seen a man tattooed by a Vickers machine gun, who believe war is inevitable, even desirable. That a—what shall we call it?—an Anglo-American showdown with Germany should be encouraged sooner rather than later, before she gets too strong. Isn’t that right, in a nutshell? Or were you playing a deeper game? Is it your preference that Britain and Germany and France and Russia all destroy each another, and leave the United States to pick up the pieces for herself?”
“You’re a dirty bastard, Richardson. A fucking traitor. Going off on your own like this, contrary to orders. We were supposed to stop Grant, that was all, not . . . damn it all . . . go off and interfere in matters of state!”
“We did stop Grant. Or you did, with that premature shot to the chest. Nerves, was it? Or had you meant to kill him all along? Violet’s husband?”
Henry bucks wildly, but Lionel holds firm.
“Not that it matters, really. I’m not a man who gives a damn about motives. What I care about is this: we recruited you for a single mission, because you were clever and American and could talk atoms and molecules, and you might simply have finished the mission and slunk back to your laboratory in peace, and have never heard from us again. And you had to meddle, Henry. Meddle in things that didn’t concern you.”
“Someone had to stop you, and Jane wasn’t going to do it—”
“Because Jane is on my side, Henry.”
“—and then you had the nerve, the fucking perversion, to use Violet to do it. Seduce her and use her, you loathsome dog, and then—”
Lionel places his lips next to Henry’s ear and growls: “Do not ever speak her name again. Do you understand me?”
Henry wriggles furiously in his grasp. A voice calls out in German.
Lionel swivels toward the canal, and a white flash explodes behind his eyes. Henry breaks free.
Knifed. The devil. He bursts forward after Henry while his flesh burns, while the blood runs down his ribs. His own fault. Henry’s hand moving in his jacket, Lionel’s distraction over Violet. Own fault. Damndamndamn. Get the suitcase. Get the fucking suitcase before . . .
Splash.
Lionel reaches the railing an instant later, in time to see Henry flailing in the black water of the Schanzengraben canal, ten feet below.
Help! he calls.
Suitcase! Where’s the fucking suitcase?
Lionel kicks off his shoes, tears off his jacket, and vaults over the railing in the wide gap between two moored boats.
The water is colder than he expects. He comes up gasping and dives back down in frantic strokes. Nothing. Black water. Nothing. An object strikes his cheek, a blinding second of hope, he grasps and tugs but it’s only a foot, Henry Mortimer’s shoe. He gives it a vicious jerk and shoots to the surface.
“Where is it?” He takes Henry by the shoulders and shakes him. “Where’s the suitcase?”
“Fuck you!” A weak gasp.
Lionel shoves his head in the water and holds it down—one second, two, three, four. “Where’s the suitcase?” he yells again, but Henry is coughing and choking, it’s hopeless. Something dark runs down the younger man’s forehead, not water.
Lionel lets him go and dives down again.
And again.
And again.
And
nothingnothingnothing
empty black water
it’s gone
Lionel puts his head back and howls to the Zurich night sky.
Someone shouts out: “Wer is da?”
An unbearable pressure settles about Lionel’s ears. Can’t be true. All that effort, all that strain, all that pain. Not possible. All lost. A slim hope, a last slim hope, but then the world was built of slim hopes, and this might have been one of them.