The Holcroft Covenant: A Novel

  She turned from the glass doors; her eyes were soft, her expression warm and yet still distant, still observing. “You look like an impatient maître d’ waiting to escort me to my table.”

  “Right this way, mademoiselle,” said Noel, carrying the tray to the small bureau across the room and placing it on top. “Would the lady care for a table by the water?” He moved a small chaise in front of the glass doors and faced her, smiling and bowing. “If the lady would care to be seated, brandy will be served, and the fireworks will begin. The torchbearers on the boats await only your presence.”

  “But where will you sit, my attractive garçon?”

  “At your feet, lady.” He leaned over and kissed her, holding her shoulders, wondering if she would withdraw or push him away.

  Whatever he expected, he was not prepared for what happened. Her lips were soft and moist, parted as if swollen, moving against his, inviting him into her mouth. She reached up with both her hands and cupped his face, her fingers gently caressing his cheeks, his eyelids, his temples. Still her lips kept moving, revolving in desperate circles, pulling him into her. They stood together. He could feel her breasts pressed against his shirt, her legs against his, pushing into him, matching strength for strength, arousing him.

  Then a strange thing happened. She began to tremble; her fingers crept around his neck and dug into his flesh, holding him fiercely, as if she were afraid he might move away. He could hear the sobs that came from her throat, feel the convulsions that gripped her. He moved his hands to her waist and gently pulled his face from hers, forcing her to look at him.

  She was crying. She stared at him for a moment; pain was in her eyes, a hurt so deep Noel felt he was an intruder watching a private agony.

  “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  “Make the fear go away,” she whispered plaintively. She reached for the buttons on her blouse and undid them, exposing the swell of her breasts. “I can’t be alone. Please, make it go away.”

  He pulled her to him, cradling her head against his chest, her hair beneath his face soft and lovely, as she was soft and lovely.

  “You’re not alone, Helden. Neither am I.”

  They were naked beneath the covers, his arm around her, her head on his chest. With his free hand, he kept lifting the strands of her long blond hair, letting them fall to cover her face.

  “I can’t see when you do that,” she said, laughing.

  “You look like a sheep dog.”

  “Are you my shepherd?”

  “I have a staff.”

  “That’s dreadful. You have a dirty mouth.” She reached up with her index finger and tapped his lips. He caught her finger between his teeth and growled. “You can’t frighten me,” she whispered, raising her face above his, depressing his tongue playfully. “You’re a cowardly lion. You make noises, but you won’t bite.”

  He took her hand. “Cowardly lion? The Wizard of Oz?”

  “Of course,” she answered. “I loved The Wizard of Oz. I saw it dozens of times in Rio. It’s where I began to learn English. I wanted so to be called Dorothy. I even named my little dog Toto.”

  “It’s hard to think of you as a little girl.”

  “I was, you know. I didn’t spring full flower.…” She stopped and laughed. She had raised herself above him; her breasts were in front of his face. His hand instinctively reached for the left nipple. She moaned and covered his hand, holding it where it was as she lowered herself back down on his chest. “Anyway, I was a little girl. There were times when I was very happy.”

  “When?”

  “When I was alone. I always had a room to myself; mother made sure of that. It was always in the back of the house or the apartment; or, if we were in a hotel, it was separate, away from my brother and sister. Mother said I was the youngest and should not be disturbed by the hours they kept.”

  “I imagine that could get pretty lonely.…”

  “Oh, no! Because I was never alone. My friends were in my mind, and they would sit in chairs and on my bed and we’d talk. We would talk for hours, telling each other our secrets.”

  “What about school? Didn’t you have flesh-and-blood friends?”

  Helden was silent for a moment. “A few, not many. As I look back, I can’t blame them. We were all children. We did as our parents told us to do. Those of us who had a parent left.”

  “What did the parents tell them?”

  “That I was a Von Tiebolt. The little girl with the silly first name. My mother was … well, my mother. I think they thought my stigma was contagious.”

  She may have been branded with a stigma, thought Noel, but her mother was not the cause of it. Maurice Graff’s ODESSA had more important things on its mind. Millions upon millions siphoned off their beloved Reich to be used by traitors such as Von Tiebolt for a massive apology.

  “Things got better when you grew up, didn’t they?”

  “Better? Certainly. You adjust, you mature, you understand attitudes you didn’t as a child.”

  “More friends?”

  “Closer ones, perhaps, not necessarily more. I was a poor mixer. I was used to being by myself; I understood why I was not included at parties and dinners. At least, not in the so-called respectable households. The years curtailed my mother’s social activities, shall we say, but not her business interests. She was a shark; we were avoided by our own kind. And of course the Germans were never really accepted by the rest of Rio, not during those years.”

  “Why not? The war was over.”

  “But not the embarrassments. The Germans were a constant source of embarrassment then. Illegal monies, war criminals, Israeli hunters … it went on for years.”

  “You’re such a beautiful woman, it’s difficult to think of you … let’s say, isolated.”

  Helden raised herself and looked at him. She smiled, and with her right hand pushed her hair back, holding it at the base of her neck. “I was very stern-looking, my darling. Hair straight, wrapped in a bun, large glasses and dresses always a size too large. You wouldn’t have looked at me twice.… Don’t you believe me?”

  “I wasn’t thinking about that.”

  “What then?”

  “You just called me ‘my darling.’ ”

  She held his eyes. “Yes, I did, didn’t I? It seemed quite natural. Do you mind?”

  He reached for her, his answer his touch.

  She sat back on the chaise, her slip serving as a negligee; she sipped the brandy. Noel was on the floor beside her, leaning against the small couch, his shorts and open shirt taking the place of a bathrobe. They held hands and watched the lights of the boats shimmering on the water.

  He turned his head and looked at her. “Feeling better?”

  “Much better, my darling. You’re a very gentle man. I haven’t known many in my life.”

  “Spare me.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean that. For your information, I’m known among Herr Oberst’s ranks as Fräulein Eiszapfen.”

  “What’s that?”

  “ ‘Icicle.’ ‘Mademoiselle Icicle.’ At work, they’re convinced I’m a lesbian.”

  “Send them to me.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “I’ll tell them you’re a faggot in drag who uses whips and bicycle chains. They’ll run at the sight of you.”

  “That’s very sweet.” She kissed him. “You’re warm and gentle and you laugh easily. I’m terribly fond of you, Noel Holcroft, and I’m not sure that’s such a good thing.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’ll say good-bye and I’ll think of you.”

  Noel reached up and held the hand that still touched his face; he was suddenly alarmed. “We just said hello. Why good-bye?”

  “You have things to do. I have things to do.”

  “We both have Zurich.”

  “You have Zurich. I have my life in Paris.”

  “They’re not mutually exclusive.”

  “You don’t know that, my darling. You don’t
know anything about me. Where I live, how I live.”

  “I know about a little girl who had a room to herself and saw The Wizard of Oz dozens of times.”

  “Think kindly of her. She will of you. Always.”

  Holcroft took her hand from his face. “What the hell are you trying to say? Thanks for a lovely evening, now good-bye?”

  “No, my darling. Not like that. Not now.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “I’m not sure. Perhaps I’m just thinking out loud.… We have days, weeks, if you wish them.”

  “I wish them.”

  “But promise me you’ll never try to find where I live, never try to reach me. I’ll find you.”

  “You’re married!”

  Helden laughed. “No.”

  “Then, living with someone.”

  “Yes, but not in the way you think.”

  Noel watched her closely. “What am I supposed to say to that?”

  “Say that you’ll promise.”

  “Let me understand you. Outside of where you work, there’s no place I can reach you. I can’t know where you live, or how to get in touch with you?”

  “I’ll leave a number of a friend. In an emergency she’ll reach me.”

  “I thought I was a friend.”

  “You are. But in a different way. Please, don’t be angry. It’s for your own protection.”

  Holcroft remembered three nights ago. In the midst of her own anxieties, Helden had been worried about him, worried that he had been sent by the wrong people. “You said in the car that Zurich was the solution to so much. Is it the answer for you? Could Zurich change the way you live?”

  She hesitated. “It’s possible. There’s so much to do.…”

  “And so little time,” completed Holcroft. He touched her cheek, forcing her to look at him. “But before the money’s released, there’s the bank in Geneva and specific conditions that have to be met.”

  “I understand. You’ve explained them, and I’m sure Johann knows about them.”

  “I’m not so sure. He’s laid himself open to a lot of speculation that could knock him out of the box.”

  “Knock him where?”

  “Disqualify him. Frighten the men in Geneva; make them close the vaults. We’ll get to him in a minute. I want to talk about Beaumont. I think I know what he is, but I need your help to confirm it.”

  “How can I help?”

  “When Beaumont was in Rio, did he have any connection with Maurice Graff?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Can we find out? Are there people in Rio who would know?”

  “Not that I know.”

  “God damn it, we’ve got to learn. Learn everything we can about him.”

  Helden frowned. “That will be difficult.”

  “Why?”

  “Three years ago, when Gretchen said she was going to marry Beaumont, I was shocked; I told you that. I was working at the time for a small research firm off Leicester Square—you know, one of those dreadful places that you send five pounds to and they get you all the information you want on a subject. Or a person. They’re superficial, but they do know how to use sources.” Helden paused.

  “You checked on Beaumont?” asked Noel.

  “I tried to. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I tried. I went back to his university records, got all the available information about his naval career. Everything was filled with approvals and recommendations, awards and advancements. Why, I can’t tell you—except that there seemed to me to be an inconsistency. I went farther back to find out what I could about his family in Scotland.”

  “What was the inconsistency?”

  “Well, according to the naval records, his parents were quite ordinary. I got the impression they were rather poor. Owners of a greengrocery or a florist shop in a town called Dunheath, south of Aberdeen, on the North Sea. Yet, when he was at university—Cambridge, by the way—he was a regular student.”

  “Regular?… What should he have been?”

  “On scholarship, I would think. There was need, and he was qualified, yet there were no applications for a scholarship. It seemed odd.”

  “So you went back to the family in Scotland. What did you learn?”

  “That’s the point. Next to nothing. It was as if they had disappeared. There was no address, no way to reach them. I sent off several inquiries to the town clerk and the postal service—obvious places people never think of. The Beaumonts were apparently an English family who simply arrived in Scotland one day shortly after the war, stayed for a few years, then left the country.”

  “Could they have died?”

  “Not according to the records. The navy always keeps them up to date in case of injury or loss of life. They were still listed as living in Dunheath, but they had left. The postal service had no information at all.”

  It was Holcroft’s turn to frown. “That sounds crazy.”

  “There’s something more.” Helden pushed herself up against the curve of the chaise. “At Gretchen’s wedding, there was an officer from Beaumont’s ship. His second-in-command, I think. The man was a year or two younger than Beaumont, and obviously his subordinate, but there was a give-and-take between them that went beyond friendship, beyond that of officer to officer.”

  “What do you mean, ‘give-and-take’?”

  “It was as if they were always thinking exactly alike. One would start a sentence, the other might finish it. One would turn in a particular direction, the other would comment on what the first was looking at. Do you know what I mean? Haven’t you seen people like that? Men like that?”

  “Sure. Brothers who are close, or lovers. And often military men who’ve served a long time together. What did you do?”

  “I checked on that man. I used the same sources, sent out the same inquiries, as I had with Beaumont. What came back was extraordinary. They were alike; only the names were different. Their academic and military records were almost identical, superior in every way. They both came from obscure towns, their parents undistinguished and certainly not well off. Yet each had gone to a major university without financial aid. And each had become an officer without any prior indication that he was seeking a military career.”

  “What about the family of Beaumont’s friend? Were you able to locate them?”

  “No. They were listed as living in a mining town in Wales, but they weren’t. They hadn’t been there in years, and no one had any information about them.”

  What Helden had learned was consistent with Noel’s theory that Anthony Beaumont was an ODESSA agent. What was important now was to take Beaumont—and any “associates”—out of the picture. They could not be allowed to interfere further with Geneva. Perhaps he and Helden were wrong: Perhaps they should reach Payton-Jones and let Beaumont become his problem. But there were side issues to consider, among which was the danger of British Intelligence’s reopening the Peter Baldwin file, going back to Code Wolfsschanze.

  “What you’ve told me fits in with what I’ve been thinking,” Noel said. “Let’s go back to your brother. I have an idea what happened in Rio. Will you talk about it now?”

  Helden’s eyes widened. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Your brother learned something in Rio, didn’t he? He found out about Graff and the Brazilian ODESSA. That was why he was hounded, why he had to get out. It wasn’t your mother, or your brother’s business dealings, or anything like that. It was Graff and the ODESSA.”

  Helden slowly let out her breath. “I never heard that, believe me.”

  “Then what was it? Tell me, Helden.”

  Her eyes pleaded with him. “Please, Noel. I owe you so much; don’t make me pay like this. What happened to Johann in Rio has nothing to do with you. Or with Geneva.”

  “You don’t know that. I don’t know that. I just know that you have to tell me. I have to be prepared. There’s so much I don’t understand.” He gripped her hand. “Listen to me. This afternoon I broke into
a blind man’s room. I smashed the door in; the sound was awful—sudden and loud. He was an old man and, of course, he couldn’t see me. He couldn’t see the fear in my own eyes. His hands shook and he whispered a prayer in French.…

  “For a moment I wanted to go to that man and hold his hands and tell him I knew how he felt. You see, he didn’t see the fear in my eyes. I’m frightened, Helden. I’m not the sort of person who crashes into people’s rooms, and shoots guns, and gets shot at. I can’t turn back, but I’m scared. So you’ve got to help me.”

  “I want to; you know that.”

  “Then tell me what happened in Rio. What happened to your brother?”

  “It’s simply not important,” she said.

  “Everything’s important.” Noel stood up and crossed to the chair where he had thrown his jacket. He showed Helden the torn lining. “Look at this. Someone in that crowd this afternoon tried to put a knife in me. I don’t know about you, but that’s never happened to me before; it’s just not something I know anything about. It petrifies me … and it makes me goddamned angry. And five days ago in New York, the man I grew up with—the only man I ever called my father—walked out on a sidewalk and was killed by an ‘out-of-control car’ that aimed for him and crushed him against a building! His death was a warning. For me! So don’t talk to me about the Rache, or the ODESSA, or the men of Wolfsschanze. I’m beginning to learn all about those sick sons of bitches, and I want every last one of them put away! With the money in Zurich, we can do that. Without it, no one’ll listen to us. It’s an economic fact of life. You don’t dismiss people who have seven hundred and eighty million dollars. You listen to people like that.” Holcroft let the jacket fall to the floor. “The only way well get to Zurich is to satisfy the bank in Geneva, and the only way to reach Geneva is to use our heads. There’s no one really on our side; there’s just us. The Von Tiebolts, the Kessler’s … and one Clausen. Now, what happened in Rio?”

  Helden looked down at the torn jacket, then back at Noel.