Read Online Borderless Deceit by Adrian de Hoog - Free Book Online

working groups she led. Principles were being developed that would lead to a new multilateral treaty restricting mercenary soldiers. She was also leading the drafting of a communique advocating rules againstincendiary bombs. Talking about this was not a chore for Rachel; she was deliberate and precise, sometimes looking into the low sun and sometimes glancing in my direction. The words came with conviction. She believed her work was important. This was Rachel talking shop.
    People are usually boring when they talk about their work. But Rachel wasn’t. She described it with humour, laughing heartily when she described the standard international negotiator – a pedant outpedanting other pedants. This wasn’t a dreadful harangue from a true believer. All the same, I found it distracting. The professional Rachel – the one pushing things forward in international committees with intellect and charm – lived in a too-distant world for me. I preferred the Rachel that talked about the spirit of the hushed forest, the soul in the sky, and the majesty of frozen lakes covered by fresh snow. Mostly though, I would have liked to have been her confidant, to have listened to her describing her lovers (she was on her third by then), to have learned of her true feelings for them. I would have liked to have expressed curiosity why she had one after another. What made them appealing? How did their characters vary? What were the mechanics of entering such relationships? More intriguing, what were the ways of ending them without apparent grief? What emotions were at play? Or were her affairs merely friendships so casual that having sex was akin to drinking tea? Try as I might, I was unable to construct a hypothetical world where such things became explicable. But how could all that be brought into the open?
    In later years I would have liked to have posed still further questions. When Rachel was next posted to Geneva, she ended her string of casual lovers, limiting herself then to just one, the Berlin banker. Somewhere in Germany he had a house, a wife and three children. How did she see
that
relationship? What did it give her? All through the years I desired to engage her in this kind of disentangling. How strange it was then that it took the computer bug – Heywood’s plague and Jaime From-Up-North’s Zadokite Port – to trigger off events which in the end allowed all this to be thoroughly talked through.
    But on the cabin bench with the February air biting and the temperature sinking all such questions were stillborn. Instead, I carefully asked, “When you’re not doing all that committee work, is there time for a private life?”
    â€œThe two are one,” she replied lightly. “I don’t look upon what I do as work. It’s a lifestyle.”
    â€œI can understand that,” I replied, too quickly to be convincing.
    â€œCan you?”
    Why did Rachel bless me that moment with her warm, conspiratorial smile? As always, it arrested me. Finally I said, “Do you remember you once told me about growing up and how you went from room to room making speeches in different countries? Is it working out like that?”
    Rachel laughed from the heart. “Yes, in a way, but it’s more complicated.”
    â€œI suppose it is.” I imagined that was true of her private life too. Thinking about this, I absent-mindedly mouthed what must have sounded like a platitude. “There’s something to be said for simplifying existence, for avoiding complexity.”
    â€œCan you do that, Carson?” Rachel asked pleasantly. “Is that your problem, denying yourself complicating situations? Is that why you’re so self-contained? Is that why you put on the air of wallflower? We should talk about it sometime.”
    Her words confused me. In a strange way I felt chastised. I had wanted her to reveal a few details of her private life, but she turned the tables and I lost my