“I should have known . . .” she said with a sigh.
“You’re not answering the question.”
“You really want to know?”
“I really want to know.”
Why not? Like it says on the CIA’s wall in Langley, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”
“When I stopped living with Evgeny, I stopped taking those once-a-day pills.”
“You were on that stuff when you were married to Evgeny? Why?”
“I didn’t want his baby, obviously.”
Charley thought: And since you certainly don’t want mine . . .
He said: “And now?”
“When I knew Dmitri and I were going to try to get out, I went to a Danish gynecologist and she gave me a shot.”
“What kind of a shot?”
“I don’t know what it was called, but she said it would keep me from getting with child for a year . . .”
In case you just happened to meet somebody who could be useful if you let him into your pants, right? Like me?
“. . . which was enough. I didn’t mind dying, but I didn’t want the bastard child of an SVR interrogator . . .”
“What?”
“The first step when breaking down a senior female traitor is to rape her,” Sweaty said matter-of-factly. “Multiple times, different men, over a forty-eight-hour period. I could handle that, but I didn’t want a child coming into the world that way. If they shot me, it wouldn’t have been a problem, but they could have—probably would have—just kept me in prison, where I would wind up giving birth to the bastard child. So I got the shot from the Danish doctor.”
Update on the epiphany: She’s not making this up.
Jesus H. Christ!
“Two weeks later I met you,” Sweaty went on. “And sure enough, the shot kept me from being with child for a year. Actually for fourteen months.”
“So what are you going to do now?”
She met his eyes, and after a moment said: “In seven months, we’re going to have a baby. I told you I was going to give you a son. Sons. Didn’t you believe me?”
He stared into her ice blue eyes, now genuinely warm, and thought: Calling Charley Castillo a miserable lowlife sickly suspicious sonofabitch is the monumental understatement of all time.
Then, taking him absolutely by surprise, his chest started to heave and his eyes teared.
“Oh, God!” he said in anguish. “Oh, Sweaty!”
“I thought you’d be happy?” she said, confused.
“Sweetheart, I am so happy I think I’m going to have a heart attack.”
[TWO]
The Breakfast Room
Casa en el Bosque