“And they’re still there?”
“Under twenty-four-hour surveillance.”
“Is the navy saying anything?”
He shook his head. “Although, with Daniel Bornemann, you never get much.”
“What do you think of him?”
He eyed me a little warily. “You’re not friends with him, are you?”
“No,” I said with a laugh. “You can say what you want.”
“He’s hard to work with. I used to think he was doing it on purpose—holding back information, giving us the wrong information, that type of thing. But I’ve decided the bigger problem is that he’s not very smart.”
“That’s funny. I get that feeling, too. But I can’t figure it out, because his wife is very clever.”
“Yes,” Teo agreed. “That is one word for her.”
“What’s another word?”
He looked up at the ceiling like he was trying to think of just the right adjective. “Cunning,” he said finally.
“Who is this?” Francesca asked, and Teo caught her and Bernardo up in Italian.
“My friend Laura and I have a theory,” I said conspiratorially. “We think Angela’s a spy for the KGB.”
We both knew I was joking, but as Teo poured us more wine, he said, “I like where this is going. Tell me more.”
“She took the job in La Maddalena to gather information about the U.S. nuclear fleet and deliver it back to the Russians. All these trips to Naples she says she takes, she’s really going to Leningrad, where she’s meeting with the head of the KGB and maybe even Brezhnev himself.”
“I love it,” he said, approvingly. “And then it makes sense she’s with Daniel. He’s her cover.”
“Yes!” I said. “If she’s KGB, then the fact that he’s so dumb is actually a big help.”
72.
THE CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATSmanaged to pull it out in the regional elections, and a day or two later, Teo’s story about theMirfieldbroke. He had been able to confirm the drug charges and also managed to get his hands on a copy of the toxicology report. Out of one hundred and ten men aboard the sub, twenty-four had tested positive for marijuana, including the XO.
Islanders were outraged, not just because so many of the men aboard theMirfieldhad been high when they’d crossed the Atlantic (and quite possibly when they’d navigated the narrow channels of the archipelago), but also because the command had not been transparent about the investigation.
Protesters gathered down at the harbor, waving signs that translated roughly to:SHOULD WE TRUST OUR FUTURE TO A BUNCH OF DRUG ADDICTS?andSHAME ON UNCLE SAM. I really liked this sign because someone had gone to the painstaking trouble of re-creating the iconicI WANT YOUrecruitment poster, except that in this version, Uncle Sam was not pointing his finger but holding a big joint between two fingers. It was very clever, but when I described it to Paul over dinner, he wasn’t amused.
“This isn’t a joke, Eileen,” he said, and I sat up a little straighter.
“No, I know. It’s very serious.”
The protests rankled Paul, who felt that the navy was handling the situation, and the archipelago and its residents had never been at any real risk. “These guys are so well trained, they could be drunk as skunks and still execute an emergency blow blindfolded.”
I was fairly certain Teo would disagree with him on that point. But it wasn’t like I was going to tell him that. In fact, when it came to Teo, I wasn’t sure what to tell Paul. I had just had this very nice lunch at Francesca and Bernardo’s, and my inclination ordinarily would have been to tell Paul all about it, minus the PCI stuff, which always made him nervous.
I knew, however, that the second I mentioned Teo had been at the lunch, Paul’s head was going to explode. I practiced breaking it to him gently, saying something super-casual, likeTeo stopped by Francesca’s the other day during my lesson, and we all wound up having lunchorI had lunch at Francesca’s the other day, and you’ll never guess who dropped by. But even those admissions were technically lies, because I had known Teo was coming for lunch when I’d accepted the invitation.
I went back and forth on this for days and finally realized too much time had passed to say anything at all. But it’s funny how even a lie of omission begets more lies. Because later, when Paul and I talked about what had happened with theMirfield, I couldn’t admit to knowing much. If I did, Paul might ask where I was getting my information, and I’d be right back where I started. It was a tricky business, and I resolved to think twice about the invitations I accepted moving forward.
73.
ALL OF THE UNRESTwith theMirfieldcaused the command to rethink its Fourth of July picnic. Rather than celebrate at the compound, as they had the previous year, it was determined that the safest bet was to move the festivities to Budelli, a small uninhabited island about thirty minutes away from La Maddalena by boat.
