A Mini Cooper barreled into the street, right into my path, and I wasn’t even thinking, I was only running for all I was worth. I timed it, going over the roof when I should have been run down by the car, sliding with purpose, and then I hit the street, rolled down to my shoulders, back onto my feet, not crippled by the impact or the force. The pain came later. I didn’t even know I was hurt.
The Audi surged ahead into the crowd and I ran hard and saw it turn a corner. I couldn’t fight my way through the thickened crowd driven out from offices and shops, the jam of cars and two buses, paralyzing the traffic between me and the Audi. I saw the Audi make another right.
I ran, my foot a hot, bright glow of pain. I made it to the corner. In the distance the Audi inched past a delivery truck, tires exhaling smoke for a moment in the tightness of its turn, and then it surged forward. I ran down the block, and when I reached the intersection the car was gone. The scarred driver had found an empty side street, one empty of panicked traffic.
With shaking hands, I tried to redial the number she’d called me from. There was no answer.
Lucy was gone. My office was gone. Everything was gone. Training bubbled to the surface in place of thought. My fingers dialed an emergency number in Langley. Words came to my mouth but I couldn’t remember what they were.
Help me. My mouth moved.
She’d gone, everyone had gone. In the heart of London, the smoke rising like a pyre’s cloud of a life ended, the sirens starting their mad kee-kaw blare, a thousand people rushing past me, I was completely alone.
4
I HAD BEEN IN THE COLD DANK PRISON for over a week when a new man sat across from me in the cell. Fresh talent to try and break me. Fine. I was bored with the last guy.
“My name is Howell. I have a question to ask you, Mr. Capra. Are you a traitor or a fool?”
“Asked and answered,” I mumbled through the desert of my mouth.
“I need an explanation, Mr. Capra.” The new interrogator leaned back in the chair. He crossed his legs, but first he gave his perfectly creased pants the slightest yank. So they wouldn’t wrinkle. I hated that little yank; it was like a razor against my skin. It told me who had all the power in the room.
I had had no real sleep for three days. I reeked of sweat. If grief has a stench, that was what I smelled like. The new interrogator was fortyish, African American, with gray spiraling in his goatee and stylish steel-framed glasses. I told him what I told interrogator one and interrogator two. I told the truth.
“I am not a traitor. I don’t believe my wife is a traitor, either.”
Howell took off his glasses. He reminded me of one of my old history professors back at Harvard. A calm coolness surrounded him. “I think I believe you.”
Was this a trick? “No one else does.”
Howell rested the end of the glasses’ earpiece against his lip. He studied me for a long, uncomfortable silence. I liked the silences. No one called me names or accused me of treason. He opened a file and he started the old litany again, as if any of my answers might change. He would keep asking me the same questions to wear me down, to wait for my mistake.
“Your full name is Samuel Clemens Capra.”
“Yes.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Samuel Clemens was Mark Twain.”
“He’s my dad’s favorite author, and my mother vetoed Huckleberry and Tom Sawyer as choices.” Normally that story would make me laugh, but nothing was normal anymore.
“I want to call my father before I answer your questions,” I said. I hadn’t asked for this in the past three days of questioning. What would I say to him? But now I wanted to hear the tobacco-flecked warmth of my dad’s voice. I wanted to find my wife. I wanted to be out of this awful, dark, stone room that had no windows. It was stupid to ask. But it felt like fighting back after the endless questions, making my own modest stand.
“I didn’t think you got along at all well with your parents.”
I said nothing. The Company knew everything about me, as they should.