The Man in the Microwave Oven Page 8

  He raised a hand, and our waiter instantly appeared with the bill for lunch in a discreet folder. Grandfather checked it cursorily, handed it back to him with a black credit card, and then waited until he was out of earshot. “I will telephone our friend and meet him later today. I need to catch up with him this afternoon because I have a meeting to attend this evening.” He seemed to think for a minute. “Hmph. If his situation isn’t toxic, and doesn’t cross too many national borders, I might invite him to join us.”

  “A meeting? National borders?”

  “A few old colleagues who get together every month or so for dinner and drinks.”

  “Old colleagues.” I took a deep breath. “You mean—spies? Other spies?”

  “Well, former military intelligence officers, for the most part.”

  Of course. “Former intell…” I had a sudden qualm. “Are they all American?”

  “Hardly, my dear; I’m a member, after all. My group in London is more geographically diverse, but even here we have quite a representative sampling of international—”

  “Oh my God, there’s a group in London?”

  “We have several chapters.”

  I choked on my iced tea, coughing and spluttering, and finally managed to get out a croak as another thought occurred to me and I bent low to whisper across the table. “Do you mean Russians? Are you friends with Russian … um … intelligence officers? Can’t you be deported for that?” I looked quickly around to see if anyone was listening, which seemed to amuse him.

  His hand absently touched the Eton Ramblers tie, and his lips twitched at my no doubt appalled expression.

  “Is the tie for … our friend, instead of a red carnation in your buttonhole?”

  “It’s been some time and that photograph didn’t capture me very well. In fact, I’m a little surprised—I thought the tie might help him to identify me, since he’s an Eton Old Boy. It was a joke between us years ago. His eyesight has been poor for quite some time. An acid attack, I believe. You said he was wearing a Roman collar, Theophania, so unless he’s in mufti, that will help me, even if he has changed a good deal.”

  My struggling brain caught up. “Oh, God, an acid attack—his face is badly scarred. But why would he come here to try and find you?”

  “I can’t imagine. The—er—codes he used are very out of date, of course. Viktor and Houston are, or were, in the nature of an SOS.” He thought for a moment. “No, not an emergency; more like a call for assistance.

  “But why did he come to me?”

  “You said he had a photo of me taken outside your shop; perhaps it was simply the only place he knew where to begin.” In a different tone he asked, “Who have you told about your hiatus here, Theophania?”

  I assumed the subject of MI5 or 6, or Her Majesty’s Secret Service and the family business, was finished. When Grandfather moved on, he moved on. “I’m in touch with a few friends in London through text or video apps, but I haven’t told them where I am.” When it came down to it, I didn’t trust any of my harebrained friends not to sell me to the UK tabloids, which were zealous and unmerciful.

  “What about Frederick?”

  My cousin Frederick—Freddie—was the family black sheep and chronically short of cash. With any kind of financial incentive, he’d hand me over to the tabloids without a second thought. “Especially not Frederick. He thinks I’m in the Canaries.”

  “Ah,” he said. We considered the dessert menu in silence for a minute or two. “He is coming for a visit.”

  “Oh, God, really?” Frederick wasn’t anyone’s idea of an ideal houseguest. He tended to overstay his welcome, often by months.

  “I’m afraid so. He thinks I’m antelope hunting in Wyoming. I may have to lease a hotel suite in Jackson Hole so he can visit me there.” He smiled faintly, and I did a mental double take. I’d thought he was simply being courteously reticent and quintessentially English when he’d taken to my strange new life, and my new identity, without a hint of disquiet. I’d obviously been mistaken. He was thoroughly enjoying himself.

  Even with most of my thoughts in turmoil, I knew how very lucky I was to have him in my life. Within weeks of telling him where I had landed—it didn’t occur to me even for a moment to keep it from him—he followed me here and leased a home on Telegraph Hill. He’d never said so, but I assumed he felt I needed some adult supervision. He’d given up his very comfortable life in Kent, surrounded by horses, hunting hounds, and Capability Brown landscapes to live in a city where, honestly, he was a fish out of water. I was vaguely pleased that he had some friends—even if they were spies. Ex-spies.

  “Thank you, Grandfather.” He looked at me with a raised eyebrow and then at our coffee cups, as if he thought I were thanking him for lunch. I hurried through the next bit: “For moving here, for helping me, for everything.”

  His expression didn’t alter. “Our sojourn has been interesting for me,” he said, “and, if you don’t mind my mentioning it, Theophania, I felt you might need some … support after … the events of last year. In any event, I was glad to do it, my dear.”

  I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, recognizing the partial truth hiding his refusal to say that he, too, had needed some propping up. The comforting idea that I’d been any help at all was fairly remote. “Grandfather—”

  But he cleared his throat and briskly checked his wristwatch. “I should telephone our friend right away; if his personality hasn’t changed, he will be pacing the floor waiting for me.”

  “I thought he might be a news photographer,” I mumbled.

  Grandfather laughed like a seal barking.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  My father had been famous; not just a little famous, a lot famous. I couldn’t imagine how my mother had been able to live a secret life next to the spotlight he worked in. I was starting to feel crushed under the weight of my own lies and prevarications after little more than a year, but she had done much more, year after year, constructing two completely separate lives for herself. How had she managed it, and had my father known?

  By the time Davie came in to work after school, I wouldn’t have noticed if my customers had walked away with half the store and I couldn’t make change without counting everything twice. Even Katrina’s murder had been shoved into the background by images of my mother and my grandfather running from spies, or possibly chasing them, across the back alleys of Europe. I counted out the same roll of quarters in the cash drawer several times and found I was staring out the window at Matthew’s comforter, rolled neatly in the doorway of Bonbons Chocolat.

  “I haven’t seen Matthew around,” I said at random, wondering if the reunion between Sergei and Grandfather had happened and what Sergei could need Grandfather’s help with.

  Davie silently relieved me of the quarters and closed the cash drawer. “He’s okay. He’s just scared,” he muttered.

  “Do you know where he lives when he’s not on Polk?”

  “He’s got a squat up near the panhandle. Don’t know where, exactly,” he added before I asked. “The priest at St. Christopher’s might know.”

  “Good thinking, Davie.”

  He snorted. “Davo. FTFY, Theo.”

  I didn’t know what that meant and I didn’t want to ask. He didn’t often talk in Internet acronyms, but I think that was one. It occurred to me as he turned back to his work that the insistence on his new name, like finding the ice to take care of my shoulder, indicated a shift in our relationship, and it left me a little off-balance. He was in the habit of coming upstairs to my flat for a snack or a meal several times a week. The last time, he’d put out the placemats and cutlery on the table, as if to separate himself from the kid who up until then had been happy to eat on the couch with his feet on the coffee table. Of course, until recently I hadn’t had placemats.

  My dreams that night were full of running footsteps and formless terror. There was nothing specific for me to be afraid of, but I was overcome by dread. I knew I couldn’t escape, th
at I should turn and face it, but instead I always ran, my feet tangled in ropes and wire, or bogged down in mud and quicksand.

  I sat up in bed, heart pounding. Nothing too mysterious about the symbolism in that one. Lucy stirred in her sleep, and I stroked her and stared at the ceiling for a while. I turned my head to look at the empty pillow next to me, and then patted the books and papers on my nightstand until I found my phone to check the time. It was only three o’clock. I took a hot shower and made some tea and took a cup back to bed with me, and dug out the files I’d stolen from Katrina’s office.

  I looked over the information Katrina had discovered about me again. If she’d planned to threaten me with exposure, she had plenty of ammunition. The incorporation document for Safe Haven Enterprises, with my real name and signature, and a copy of Haruto’s lease, with my current name as owner, were particularly revealing. He and I had exchanged documents and signatures via an online document signature service, which I’d been assured was secure. Katrina might have used the same service, but surely that wouldn’t give her access to everyone’s documents.

  The photos she’d found online included one of me and a few friends in the fountains of Trafalgar Square, celebrating my eighteenth birthday. That one actually made me smile. Grandfather had been less amused when he collected me from the local police station. The file included a copy of the police report from that night. Other photos included the one taken of me the night of my mother’s death. There were copies of some of my e-mails, too. I wasn’t sure what level of expertise was required to get these things. The incorporation papers might be public records, but the e-mails and the lease shouldn’t be, which implied some kind of advanced computer skills. The only computer whiz I knew was Haruto, and I trusted him. Maybe I shouldn’t. That was a new thought. There were no originals, just copies, so I set them aside to burn the next time I had a fire.

  I didn’t know what to do with the other folder. I’d stolen it in a confused impulse to protect my friends and neighbors, but now I couldn’t decide if it would be creepy to keep it or better to destroy it.

  I closed it and stuffed it under my pillow again.

  I fell asleep still pondering and didn’t wake until nearly seven thirty. I sent Nat a quick apologetic text and walked up to The Coffee, shivering a little as usual. There were no other people on the street, unless you counted Matthew, who was just waking up in the doorway of Bonbons Chocolat, wrapped in a pink flowered duvet. I was remarkably relieved to see him; I hadn’t realized until that moment how concerned I’d been by his absence. He sat up as I approached him and looked blearily around.

  “Hi, Matthew,” I said, and he nodded, eyes to the comforter, his fingers tracing the flowers, one-by-one. He counted them quietly to himself as I tried to get his attention. “Would you like a muffin? How about a coffee?”

  “Black, no sugar; black no sugar,” he muttered nearly under his breath. “Muffin, muffin, muffin.”

  He didn’t speak much and what he said didn’t always seem rational, although even his oddest remarks had some sort of real world underpinnings if you thought about them enough. He’d been muttering, I thought, about mats, for several days a few months ago, and I thought he meant he wanted one to sleep on, so I bought him a yoga mat at the variety store on the next block. But he’d just rolled it carefully and added it to the assortment of mysterious packages that hung from his waist on ragged strings. Then one morning he’d handed me a grubby piece of paper with MATTH printed crookedly in pencil. Finally grasping what he’d been trying to tell me, I asked him if he was Matt or Matthew and he smiled at the ground.

  “Matthew, Matthew, Matthew,” he’d said, so Matthew it was. Sometimes he seemed relatively clean and at other times, like today, he and his clothes were filthy and he smelled terrible, as if he’d been dumpster diving or digging in the dirt somewhere. A small insect ran out of his beard and along his jawline, and without thinking, I reached down to pick it off his face and crush it between my thumbnails. He didn’t take any notice, concentrating on his count of the flowers on his comforter.

  Someone from St. Christopher’s occasionally persuaded him to take a shower and sleep for a night in the small shelter there. One of the volunteers either washed his clothes or, if they were too far gone, wrapped them up in a bundle, which he invariably insisted upon keeping, and gave him an assortment from their donated clothes bin. He refused to relinquish the incredibly grimy and bedraggled raincoat he wore every day. During the day, bundles of greasy clothes dangled from strings around his neck and from the piece of rope tied around his waist. He used them as pillows when he slept outside. His shopping cart was usually half full of the cans and bottles he collected, and he protected it ferociously.

  He might still be in the doorway when I returned with his coffee and a muffin, but sometimes he just wandered off to wherever he spent his days. If I left him now, he might not be here when I came back. He usually left his comforter in a tangle in the doorway; Faye-Bella rolled and saved the comforter for him, and often she ran it through the washer and dryer, too.

  I called the rectory and explained that Matthew was in a fairly bad way, and the man I spoke to said he appreciated the call and would send someone.

  “I tried to bring him in last night but he wouldn’t come,” he said.

  “Bring him a coffee, will you?” I whispered into the phone. “I’ll stay with him until you get here.”

  But Matthew shoo’d me away brusquely when I tried to linger. I sat on the edge of the planter outside Aromas, trying to keep an eye on him without crowding him. In ten minutes or so I was surprised to see Katrina’s cousin, Gavin Melnik, approaching. I was even more surprised when he reached Matthew, crouched down, and handed over a paper coffee cup.

  Matthew took it and started mumbling: “Coffee, black. Coffee, black. Coffee black.”

  “Right, I remember. Coffee black,” Melnik said. “So how about coming over to the shelter? Maybe get you some new clothes, what do you say?” He stood up slowly.

  “Coffee, black. Coffee, black. Thief. Thief. Thief.”

  Melnik hesitated, as if he wasn’t sure how to manage, but then he rallied. “Sure, we’ll have more coffee, too. Want to come with me? I won’t let anyone take your stuff.”

  Matthew stood up and let his comforter fall to the ground. Then he just waited, with his head down. Melnik reached out his hand slowly and gently took his arm, but Matthew threw him off with surprising force. Melnik took a couple of steps back and raised both hands in a “surrender” gesture.

  “No touching today; I get it,” Melnik said gently. He bent his head to look up under Matthew’s tangle of greasy hair. “Sometimes Matthew likes to touch, but not today, right, Matthew?”

  Matthew flung his head up, and his eyes darted from left to right and back again; he seemed to be anxiously consulting people only he could see. “Not today. Not today. Not today.” I couldn’t tell if he was talking to us, or if his imaginary companions needed reassurance. Melnik stood up straight and said to him, “Father Martin will be at the rectory, and we’ll get you some more coffee.” After a brief hesitation he started to move off down the sidewalk, and Matthew followed a couple of paces behind, pushing his shopping cart. I watched them until Matthew caught up after half a block. He grabbed a handful of Melnik’s sweatshirt and held on as they made their way slowly toward St. Christopher’s. For the first time I realized that, although he looked much older, Matthew was probably only in his twenties. Melnik, who had several years on him, actually looked younger.

  I didn’t know if Inspector Lichlyter had spoken to Matthew about the night Katrina was killed, or if she’d get anything coherent from him if she had. But if he had seen something, he could be a helpful witness, given the right encouragement. Or he might be in danger. As soon as I thought of that, I left her a message to let her know where he’d be for the next hour, if she wanted to interview him.

  After a busy day, I spent most of the night reading and rereading online encyclopedia
s and English news stories from the time just before I fled London. If my mother had been a spy, I thought—hoped, I suppose—that there was something more to my parents’ story. But there was no hint, anywhere, that it was anything but a tragic murder followed by a remorseful suicide. It left me feeling depressed and anxious and reliving the worst time of my life, when my life had changed forever and I found myself alone and hiding in a strange city.

  My father was more-or-less a penniless artist when he and my mother met. She had surprised her parents by taking a first in classics at Oxford, and surprised them again by turning down more eligible suitors to marry him. Within twenty years, specializing in portraits of the rich and famous, my father was so well known that he was rich and famous himself.

  When I was a young girl, I learned to sit quietly if I wanted to stay in my father’s studio while he worked, and it eventually became so much a part of our routine, I think he often forgot I was there. When he wasn’t working, standing like a giant at his easel, he was reading. If his model was present, then he accompanied them out of his studio, but if he was working alone, there was almost no time between setting his paints down and picking up a book. It was part of the same movement—left hand releasing the giant palette onto his table; right hand onto the book of the moment, opened to the page where he’d left off reading, so there was no delay, no time for thought, before picking up the threads of his novel. He would walk away from his easel already reading and quietly sink down into an armchair where he might stay, almost unmoving, for ten minutes, or an hour, or even three hours without raising his eyes from the page except to occasionally glance over to his work in progress. Sometimes I’d be reading, too, but often I’d leave while he was still engrossed. He would stay there until my mother called upstairs that lunch—or dinner, or the car—was waiting, and was he coming down? I can still see the slight frown, the almost glassy-eyed concentration, as he transferred from one state of mind to another. It was only later that I thought it strange, that it was almost as if he were afraid to have time to think, even for a minute, without distraction.