The Faithful Spy

She motioned him in. The living room was nicely furnished, Wells saw. A handful of children’s books lay on the coffee table. Nineteenth-century drawings of men in robes and wigs hung on the walls. A life that had no intersection with his own. He bit his cheek and tried to think of something to say.

“What’s with them?” He pointed to the drawings. Then, feeling as though he’d already stumbled, he tried to make the question less hostile. “They’re neat, is all I mean.”

“Howard’s a lawyer.”

“Howard?”

“My husband.” She pointed to a picture: Heather, a handsome paunchy man who must be Howard, Evan, and two young children, a boy and a girl. “That’s George, and Victoria. Howard has a thing for English royalty.”

“Do you?”

She shook her head. It wasn’t an answer to his question. “I figured you must be dead when you didn’t come to Mona’s funeral.”

“No such luck.”

“She missed you, John. She thought you’d come back.”

“I didn’t know.”

“They didn’t tell you on super-spy radio or something? Give you the bat signal so you could come home?”

Wells tried not to think of his mother in her hospital bed, waiting and dying. Then just dying.

“I’m sorry, John. I didn’t mean that. You always were a mama’s boy, that’s all. I figured if you were anywhere on the planet you’d be back.”

“I never thought of myself as a mama’s boy.” But he couldn’t deny that some of his fondest memories growing up were of Mona baking in their kitchen, while Herbert worked at the hospital or read in his study. Wells smiled. “Maybe I was. So this is your life?”

A look he couldn’t read crossed her face. “This is my life. Married. Three kids. Boring.”

“Heather—”

“Whatever you’re gonna say, just don’t.”

“Can I see Evan?”

“He’s at Little League practice at the YMCA.”

“He plays baseball?”

“Third base. He doesn’t even know who you are, John.”

Wells felt as though she’d slapped him. “Tell you what. Stay here a year, be his dad, you can see him. Heck, you can teach him all that spy stuff.”

“Heather—”

“Six months?” Pause. “A month? Is your son worth a month to you, John?”

Wells was silent. She was right. He couldn’t begin to tell his son what he’d done, where he’d been. And what if the boy accepted him and then he disappeared again? What then?

Heather’s face softened as she saw him nod.

“What do you tell him?”

“That you’re a soldier. That you’re fighting a war that we have to win. The truth.”

She smiled as she said the last two words, and he wondered if she still loved him. Not that it mattered. “Do you remember—” she started to say. She broke off as the phone rang, an electric trill that went six rings and then stopped.

“No answering machine?” he said.

“Voice mail.”

Huh. Voice mail had been much less popular when he’d left. A meaningless glimmer of a thought, but for a moment it pulled his mind from this miserable day. “What were you going to ask me?” he said.

But her smile had disappeared, and he knew she wouldn’t say. The phone had pulled her back to her life now, and she had no place for him in it.

“You should go, John.”

He looked around the room, trying to imprint it in his mind so he would have something of her to remember. Suddenly she cocked her head, a tic he knew well. “Why’d you come home?”

“What?”

“You’re still working for the agency.” It wasn’t a question. He wondered if she’d been asked, or told, to call in if she saw him. “So why are you here? Why now?”

“You know I can’t say.”

“Do they know that you’re here? In America?”

“Of course.”

But he had never been able to lie to her, and he could see she knew he was lying now. Her face showed her uncertainty. He wished he could explain, tell her how he had ended up here without a person in the world he could trust. Instead he walked to the door. As he stepped through, he felt his hand on her arm. He turned, and she hugged him, for real this time. He closed his eyes and hugged her even harder.

Then she let him go.

wells sat in his rented Dodge and tried to burn his son’s picture into his mind. Finally he slipped the car into gear and rolled off, driving slowly toward the YMCA. But when he reached the fields he didn’t recognize Evan.

h e a t h e r wa t c h e d h i m leave. When the Dodge had disappeared, she pulled a business card from her wallet and picked up her phone to make a call that would push the United States closer to the deadliest terrorist attack in history. She punched in the numbers. The phone rang twice.

“Is this Jennifer Exley?” Heather said. She paused. “Jennifer? It’s Heather Murray. Yes. John Wells’s ex-wife.”

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