“Danke, mein Bruder.”
Tennyson replaced the phone. There was a last call to make before he boarded the plane to Berlin. Not to Gretchen, now; he did not want to speak with her. If Beaumont’s actions proved to be as disastrous as they appeared, if in his recklessness he had impeded the cause of Wolfsschanze, then all the strings that led to him and through him to Geneva would have to be severed. It was not an easy decision to make. He loved Gretchen as few men on earth loved their sisters; in a way that the world disapproved of because the world did not understand. She took care of his needs, satiated his hungers, so that there were never any outside complications. His mind was free to concentrate on his extraordinary mission in life. But that, too, might have to end. Gretchen, his sister, his lover, might have to die.
Holcroft listened to Althene’s last words, stunned at her equilibrium, astonished that it had been so easy. The funeral had been yesterday.
“You do what you must, Noel. A good man died needlessly, foolishly, and that’s the obscenity. But it’s over; there’s nothing either of us can do.”
“There’s something you can do for me.”
“What’s that?”
He told her of Manfredi’s death—as the Swiss believed it had happened. An old man wracked with pain, preferring a quick end to prolonged suffering and infirmity. “The last thing he did as a banker was to meet with me in Geneva.”
Althene was silent for a moment, reflecting on a friend who once meant a great deal to her. “It was like him to fulfill an agreement as important as the one he brought to you. He wouldn’t leave it to others.”
“There was something else; it concerned you. He said you’d understand.” Holcroft held the telephone firmly and spoke as convincingly as he could. He expressed Manfredi’s “concerns” about those who might remember a headstrong woman many believed responsible for the conversion of Heinrich Clausen, and for his decision to betray the Reich. He explained that it was entirely possible that there remained fanatics who might still seek revenge. Manfredi’s old friend Althene Clausen should not risk being a target; she should go away for a while, where no one could find her in the event Clausen’s name surfaced. “Can you understand, mother?”
“Yes,” answered Althene. “Because he said it to me once before, several hundred years ago. On a warm afternoon in Berlin. He said they would look for us then, too. He was right; he’s right now. The world is filled with lunatics.”
“Where will you go?”
“I’m not sure. Take a trip, perhaps. It’s a very good time for it, isn’t it? People are so embarrassingly solicitous about death.”
“I’d rather you went someplace where you were out of sight. Just for a few weeks.”
“It’s easy to be out of sight. I have a certain expertise in that. For two years after we left Berlin, you and I kept moving. Until Pearl Haror, actually. The Bund’s activities were too varied for comfort in those days; it took its orders from the Wilhelmstrasse.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Holcroft, moved.
“There’s a great deal—No matter. Richard put an end to it all. He made us stop running, stop hiding. I’ll let you know where I am.”
“How?”
His mother paused. “Your friend in Curaçao, Mr. Buonoventura. He was positively reverential. I’ll let him know.”
Holcroft smiled. “All right. I’ll call Sam.”
“I never did tell you about those days, did I? Before Richard came into our lives. I really must; you might be interested.”
“I’d be very interested. Manfredi was right. You are incredible.”
“No, dear. Merely a survivor.”
As always, they said rapid goodbyes; they were friends. Noel walked out of the assistant manager’s office. He started across the George V lobby, toward the bar, where his friend was waiting with aperitifs, then decided to take a short detour. He crossed to the huge window to the left of the entrance and peered out between the folds of the red velvet drapes. The green Fiat was still down the street.
Noel continued across the lobby toward the bar. He would spend a quarter of an hour in pleasant conversation with the assistant manager, during which he would impart some very specific, if erroneous, information, and ask a favor or two.
And then there was Helden. If she did not call him by five o’clock, he would telephone her at Gallimard. He had to see her; he wanted a gun.
“Four or five days?” exploded Holcroft into the phone. “I don’t want to wait four or five days. I’ll meet him anywhere! I can’t waste time.”
“He said he wouldn’t be in Paris until then and suggested you go on to Berlin in the meantime. It would only take you a day or so.”
“He knew about Kessler?”
“Perhaps not by name, but he knew about Berlin.”
“Where was he?”
“At the airport in Athens.”
Noel remembered. He disappeared four days ago in Bahrain. Our operatives are watching for him from Singapore to Athens: British Intelligence would have its confrontation with John Tennyson imminently, if it had not taken place already. “What did he say about the British?”
“He was furious, as I knew he would be. It’s not unlike Johann to write an article that would embarrass the Foreign Office. He was outraged.”
“I trust he won’t. The last thing any of us want is a newspaper story. Can you call him back? Can I call him? He could fly in tonight. I could pick him up at Orly.”
“I’m afraid not. He was catching a plane. There’s only a number in Brussels; it’s where he picks up his messages. It took him nearly two days to get mine.”
“Goddammit!”
“You’re overwrought.”
“I’m in a hurry.”
“Noel …” Helden began haltingly. “I don’t have to work tomorrow. Could we meet? Perhaps go for a drive? I’d like to talk.”
Holcroft was startled. He wanted to see her. “Why wait until tomorrow? Let’s have dinner.”
“I can’t. I have a meeting tonight. I’ll be at your hotel at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. In the afternoon you can fly to Berlin.”
“Are you meeting your friends?”
“Yes.”
“Helden, do something for me. I never thought I’d ask this of anyone, but … I want a gun. I don’t know how to go about getting one, what the laws are.”
“I understand. I’ll bring it. Until morning.”
“See you tomorrow.” Holcroft hung up and looked at his open attaché case on the hotel chair. He could see the cover of the Geneva document. It reminded him of the threat from the men of Wolfsschanze. Nothing is as it was for you.… He knew now how completely true that was. He had borrowed a gun in Costa Rica. He had killed a man who was about to kill him, and he never wanted to see a gun in his hand again, for as long as he lived. That, too, was changed. Everything was changed, because a man he never knew had cried out to him from the grave.
20
“Do you like mountain trout?” asked Helden, as she handed him the automatic in the front seat of his rented car.
“Trout’s fine,” he said, laughing.
“What’s funny?”
“I don’t know. You hand me a gun, which isn’t the most normal thing for a person to do, and at the same time you ask me what I’d like for lunch.”
“One has nothing to do with the other. I think it might be a good idea if you took your mind off your problems for a few hours.”
“I thought you wanted to talk about them.”
“I do. I also wanted to know you better. When we met the other night, you asked all the Questions.”
“Before I asked those questions, you did all the yelling.”
Helden laughed. “I’m sorry about that. It was hectic, wasn’t it?”
“It was crazy. You have a nice laugh. I didn’t know you laughed.”
“I do quite frequently. At least twice a month, regularly as clockwork.”
Holcroft glanced at her. “I shouldn’t have
said that. I don’t imagine you find much to laugh at.”
She returned his look; a smile was on her lips. “More than you think, perhaps. And I wasn’t offended. I’m sure you think me rather solemn.”
“Our talk the other night wasn’t designed for a barrel of laughs.”
“No, it wasn’t.” Helden turned, both hands on her knees beneath the pleated white skirt on the seat. There was a gamine quality about her Noel had not noticed before. It was reinforced by her words. “Do you ever think about them?” she asked.
“Who?”
“Those fathers you and I never knew. What they did was so incredible, such an act of daring.”
“Not just one act. Hundreds … thousands of them. Each different, each complicated, going on for months. Three years of manipulations.”
“They must have lived in terror.”
“I’m sure they did.”
“What drove them?”
“Just what …” Noel stopped, not knowing why he did so. “Just what Heinrich Clausen wrote in his letter to me. They were shocked beyond anything we can imagine when they learned about the ‘rehabilitation camps.’ Auschwitz, Belsen—it blew their minds. It seems incredible to us now, but remember, that was ’forty-three. There were conspiracies of silence.”
Helden touched his arm; the contact was brief, but it was firm. “You call him Heinrich Clausen. You can’t say ‘father,’ can you?”
“I had a father.” Noel stopped. It was not the moment to talk at length about Richard Holcroft; he had to control himself. “He’s dead. He was killed five days ago in New York.”
“Oh, God.…” Helden stared at him; he could feel the intensity of her concern. “Killed? Because of Geneva?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“But you think so.”
“Yes.” He gripped the wheel and was silent. A shell was forming, and it was an awful thing.
“I’m sorry, Noel. I don’t know what else to say. I wish I could comfort you somehow, but I don’t know how.”
He looked at her, at her lovely face and at the clear brown eyes filled with concern. “With all your problems, just saying that is enough. You’re a nice person, Helden. I haven’t met too many people like you.”
“I could say the same … nice person.”
“We’ve both said it. Now, what about that trout? If we’re going to take a few hours off, why not tell me where we’re going?”
“To Barbizon. There’s a lovely restaurant in the center of the town. Have you ever been to Barbizon?”
“Several times,” said Noel, his eyes suddenly on the small rectangular mirror outside the window.
There was a dark-green Fiat behind them. He had no idea whether it was the same car that had waited for him yesterday on the avenue George V, but he intended to find out—without alarming Helden. He slowed down; the Fiat did not pass. Instead, it veered into the right lane, allowing another car to come between them.
“Is something wrong?” asked Helden.
Holcroft depressed the accelerator. The automobile lurched slightly at the slower speed. “No, not really. I had trouble with this damn thing yesterday. It needs a carburetor adjustment, I think. Every now and then there’s an air lock. It passes if you nurse it.”
“You sound very efficient.”
“I’m a fair mechanic. You don’t take jobs in Mexico and points south unless you are.” He stepped on the pedal and held it down; the car sped forward.
He could see the green Fiat in the rearview mirror now. It swerved to the left, passing the intervening car, then returned to the right lane, behind them. The question was answered. They were being followed.
His fear was making him cautious. Whoever was in that Fiat was indirectly involved with Richard Holcroft’s death; he was certain of it. And he was going to trap that man.
“There. Everything’s fine now,” he said to Helden. “The air lock’s passed. Lunch in Barbizon sounds like a hell of a good idea. Let’s see if I remember the way.”
He did not. On purpose. He took several wrong turns, covering his mistakes with laughter, insisting the whole French countryside had been changed around. It became a silly game with a deadly serious objective: He had to see the face of the man in the Fiat. In Paris that face had been obscured behind a windshield and a cloud of cigarette smoke; he had to be able to recognize it in a crowd.
The Fiat’s driver, however, was no amateur. If he was bewildered by Noel’s aimless turns and shifting speeds, he gave no indication of it, staying a discreet distance behind them, never allowing the gap between them to become too close. There was a disabled car on a narrow road south of Corbeil-Essonnes; it was a good excuse to stop. Holcroft pulled alongside to see if he could help; the driver of the Fiat had no choice. He drove swiftly past the two parked cars. Noel looked up. The man was fair, his hair light brown; and there was something else: splotches, or pockmarks, on the man’s cheek.
He would know that face again. That was all that mattered.
The driver of the disabled car thanked Holcroft, indicating that help was on the way.
Noel nodded and started up again, wondering if he’d see the green Fiat soon. Would it be in a side road, waiting for him, or would it simply emerge from nowhere and appear in the rearview mirror?
“That was a very nice thing to do,” said Helden.
“We ugly Americans do nice things every once in a while. I’ll get back on the highway.”
If the green Fiat was in a side road, he did not see it. It was simply there, in his mirror, on the highway. They got off at the Seine-et-Marne exit and drove into Barbizon. The green Fiat stayed far behind, but it was there.
Their lunch was a strange mixture of ease and awkwardness: brief starts and abrupt stops; short conversations begun, suddenly suspended at midpoint, the purpose unremembered. Yet the ease was in their being together, physically close to each other. Holcroft thought she felt it as surely as he did.
This sense of closeness was confirmed by something Helden did, obviously without thinking about it: She touched him repeatedly. She would reach over briefly and touch his sleeve, or, more briefly, his hand. She would touch him for emphasis, or because she was asking a question, but she touched him as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to do. And it was natural for him to accept her touch and return it.
“Your brother didn’t discuss Beaumont?” he asked.
“Yes, he did. He was very angry. Everything about Beaumont angers him. He thinks you were wrong about seeing him on the plane, though. He wanted you to bring the photograph. I told him you didn’t have it. He was furious.”
“About the photograph?”
“Yes. He said it might be dangerous. It could lead ‘people,’ he said, to Gretchen, to you. To Geneva.”
“I think the answer’s simpler. The Royal Navy’s no different from any other military organization. The officers protect each other.”
“My promiscuous sister, you mean?”
Holcroft nodded; he really did not want to discuss Gretchen Beaumont, not with Helden. “Something like that.”
She touched his fingers. “It’s all right, Noel. I don’t sit in judgment where my sister’s concerned.” Then she took away her hand, embarrassed. “What I mean is, I have no right … No, I don’t mean that, either. I mean where you are concerned, I have no right.…”
“I think we both know what you mean,” interrupted Holcroft, covering her hand with his. “Feel free to have a right. I think I like it.”
“You make me feel foolish.”
“Do I? It’s the last thing I want to make you feel.” He pulled back his hand, and followed her glance out the window. She was looking at the small stone pond on the terrace, but his attention did not remain where hers did. His gaze rose to several groups of tourists strolling in the Barbizon street beyond the gates of the restaurant. The man with the light-brown hair and pockmarked face was standing motionless on the far sidewalk. A cigarette was in his mouth, what app
eared to be an artist’s brochure in his hands. But the man was not looking at the brochure. His head was raised slightly, his eyes angled over at the entrance of the restaurant.
It was time to make his move, thought Noel. His rage was rekindled; he wanted that man.
“I’ve got an idea,” he said as casually as he could. “I saw a poster by the door that—in my schoolboy French—I think said Fête d’Hiver. Someplace called Montereau-something-or-other. Isn’t that a kind of carnival?”
“The fête is, not the village. It’s about seven or eight miles south of here, I think.”
“What is it? The carnival, I mean.”
“Fêtes d’hiver? They’re quite common and usually run by the local churches. As a rule, they’re associated with a saint’s day. It’s like a flea market.”
“Let’s go.”
“Really?”
“Why not? It might be fun. I’ll buy you a present.”
Helden looked at him quizzically. “All right,” she said.
* * *
The bright afternoon sunlight bounced off the side-view mirror in harsh reflections, causing Holcroft to squint and blink repeatedly, trying to rid his eyes of blind spots. The dark-green Fiat appeared now and then. It was far behind them, but never out of sight for very long.
He parked the car behind a church, which was the focal point of the small town. Together he and Helden walked around the rectory to the front and into the crowds.
The village square was typically French, the cobblestone streets spreading out like irregular spokes from an imperfect wheel, old buildings and winding sidewalks everywhere. Stalls were set up in no discernible order, their awnings in various stages of disrepair, crafts and foodstuffs of all descriptions piled on counters. Shiny platters and a profusion of oilcloth caught the rays of sun; shafts of light shot through the crowd. This fête was not aimed at the tourist trade. Foreigners belonged to the spring and summer months.
The man with the pockmarked face was standing in front of a stall halfway across the square. He was munching on a piece of pastry, his eyes darting in Holcroft’s direction. The man did not know he had been spotted; Noel was certain of that. He was far too casual, too intent on eating. He had his targets under surveillance; all was well. Holcroft turned to Helden, at his side.