He breathes slowly for a moment. “Your dad doesn’t work for the State Department, Gwendolyn. He has never worked for the State Department. It’s called ‘official cover.’”
He pauses a moment, eyes locked onto mine until the words sink in. If my dad doesn’t work for the State Department, then there’s really only one possibility left. I open my mouth to speak but have trouble forming the words. “He’s a spy,” I say finally. “He’s CIA.”
Joey gives me a sad smile. “Remember, you came to that conclusion on your own, got it? I never told you.”
The only thing that shocks me is that I’m not shocked at all. It hits me like an answer to a riddle I’ve heard before but forgotten, the punch line of a joke I saw coming a mile away. Part of me always knew this, at least as long ago as our time in Egypt, maybe earlier, maybe Venezuela. I didn’t know what the letters CIA stood for when I was ten or eleven, but I knew what my father did was different. None of the other parents took an hour to drive their kids to school, a different route every day. None of the parents had meetings at 3:00 a.m.
“And you?” I ask. “Are you a spy? How about Chase Carlisle?”
“What we are doesn’t matter.”
“So the answer is yes.”
“You’re free to believe whatever you want,” he says. “Just keep your conclusions to yourself.”
I turn away, unable to look at him. There’s an old couple shuffling toward us, huddled together under an umbrella. I wait until they pass. “So all those postings overseas, my dad was spying?”
“He was a political officer for the Department of State, just a diplomat filling a desk job. Officially, that’s all he ever was.”
“But unofficially?” I ask.
“Unofficially he was a patriot, the best man I’ve ever worked with,” Joey says.
*
Bela and Lili Atzmon have done this before. Or at least, that’s how it looks to me as Joey tells them the official version—disappearance in Paris, circumstances unknown. Standing beside each other, they nod along coldly at the news, like doctors brought in for a consultation, their bathrobes like lab coats.
There is, I learn when Joey leaves, a ritual to be performed when a father goes missing. Lili builds what can only be described as a nest—a ring of quilts and pillows on the couch in her living room with me at its center, like a choked-up baby bird. Tea is prepared, the gentle herbal kind.
After the first hour, I’m cried out, my wells of everything run dry. Eyes hurting, nose raw and red, I stare down blankly, weaving my fingers through little holes in a crocheted blanket, trapping them like a net. Bela sits in his armchair, a glass of palinka in hand, while Lili is perched next to me on the edge of the couch.
“You’re good at this whole comforting thing,” I say.
Lili smiles, fusses with the blanket over my shoulder. “Where we’re from, fathers sometimes disappear,” she says.
My dad lied to me. In fact my dad has done nothing but lie for as long as I can remember. I think of all the times he would come home from Khartoum or Islamabad—or is that even where he really went?—and I’d ask him how his meeting had been, or how the official dinner had gone down, or how they’d liked the presentation he’d given. “Death by boredom,” he’d say, and roll his eyes clownishly. Well, screw him, I think. Screw him and the years of lies. The years where the one person in the world he shouldn’t lie to, he lied to.
My mind goes to the timeline written on the whiteboard at my dad’s office, then to the conversation with Joey out on the street. I know I’m not supposed to say anything about that. I know it’s supposed to be a secret. But Bela and Lili know the world, and they’re all I have now. My mouth flutters open, as if I can’t stop myself from speaking. “He’s not a diplomat,” I say.
Bela holds up his hand. “Of course, child. You don’t need to say it.”
I peer at him closely. “He told you?”
Bela shrugs. “He didn’t need to tell me, just as I didn’t need to tell him. Spies can smell one another across a room. Like dogs.”
There’s something strange in his eyes as he looks at me, apology and mischief.
“You—you worked for the CIA?” I ask.
From Bela, a genuine laugh. “Thank God, no. Someone else.”
And it’s all he needs to say. He’d spent thirty years in Israel. “Mossad,” I say quietly.
No response from Bela.
So the kindly old shopkeeper had once belonged to one of the best and fiercest intelligence organizations in the world. Sure. Why not? Let’s just pull back the curtain on the entire world today.
Bela clears his throat. “Your father made an arrangement with Lili and me. We are to provide help to you.”
“I know. Keep an eye on me while he’s away.”
“No. Another sort of arrangement.” He leans forward, hands gripping his knees. “The clandestine services, his and mine, can be cruel to the families of those who serve them. So in the event of—of something like this—he wanted us to make sure your interests were looked after.”
“Like what?”
“Like that you’re not fed bullshit.”
My eyes clench again, but I force it away. There’s really only one question worth asking. “I want you to—be honest, Bela. The truth.”
“You want to know if he’s dead.”
I nod.
“If their intention—their immediate intention—was to kill him, you’d know. His body would have been found there on the street already. I’m sorry to be blunt.”
“Do you think they’ll let him go, whoever has him?”
“If whoever took him is given the money or favors or whatever they’re looking for, then maybe,” Bela says.
I look at him. “And if not?”
He shakes his head.
*
In the photo, Bela is a young man, thin as a rail, but good-looking despite the boxy suit. He had just gotten out of prison, Lili says, and was lucky not to have been shot. Shot, I ask? She tells me about the revolution of 1956, of Soviet troops and massacres in the streets of Budapest. Lili was a student of biology at the time, and Bela was a young professor of chemistry, barely out of school himself. He was sent to prison for two years after that, she tells me, and nearly died of tuberculosis.
I’m truly grateful to them for the distraction. And they’re so clever about it, Bela and Lili. Distraction is an art, and they know a card game or silly movie would never keep my mind off the swirling tragedy in my head. So here is someone else’s tragedy, someone else’s tough times, close enough to my own, yet far enough from my own, so that I can absorb myself in it without guilt.
Lili refills my tea, while Bela yawns and opens another album. People around a swimming pool. Shirtless men with hairy chests and wives in dowdy swimsuits toast the camera with bottles of beer. “Tel Aviv,” Bela says. “1973.” He taps a man and woman. “This is us, of course.” Then he taps a squat, balding man with a wicked smile and a cigarette between thumb and forefinger. “This one was like a brother to me. He went on to become head of my service.”
“These are your spy friends?” I ask.
“Every one of them,” Bela says.
Lili closes the album. “Enough,” she says. “No war stories tonight, Belachik. The girl must rest.”