He grabbed her, shook her, and screamed into her face in which her voiceless mouth went on forming sentences: “Shut up, Fran, stop!” She screwed up her face. “You’ll write a note saying you had to take Jill to the hospital, and you’ll leave it on the door downstairs. And if he comes up anyway—I’ll deal with him, which is perhaps the right end for this crazy story! I’ve had it!” Jill had woken up and was screaming, and Georg saw the fear again in Fran’s look. “Do it, otherwise you and Jill will regret it.”
She wrote the note and stuck it on the door downstairs. Benton didn’t buzz. They finished reading the paper, cooked together, and went to bed early, because Fran had to be up early. They made love, and it seemed to Georg that she was so passionate because he was so remote.
In his thoughts he was with Townsend Enterprises, Gorgefield Aircraft, and the Russians. He wanted to bring the story to an end. The way the players were placed and the cards dealt, it looked bad for him. The cards needed to be called in, reshuffled, and dealt again—and why not bring in a new player? If the Russians weren’t in the game, he’d have to bring them in.
40
IF THE THIRTY MILLION JOE had gotten from Gorgefield Aircraft wasn’t enough, and Joe wanted another thirty million from the Russians—how would he go about it? He would make contact, present them with a model construction sketch, and name a price. Joe wouldn’t do this as head of Townsend Enterprises—in fact, he would perhaps go through a straw man. How would the Russians react? They would study the designs thoroughly, want details about all the material, haggle over the price, find out whom they were dealing with, and whether they were being taken for a ride. And how would he, Georg, set his trap?
By the time Fran came home from work Monday evening, he had a plan. Up till then, he had celebrated Fran’s return home according to the image of the ideal American housewife he had gotten from the movies, with Jill on his arm, dinner on the stove, cocktails in the fridge, and candles on the table. It was an ironic game, but an affectionate one. On this evening, Georg was playing another game.
“Which do you want to hear first, the good news or the bad?” he asked.
Fran realized that something was up, and smiled uncertainly. “The good news.”
“I’m leaving in a few days.”
“But you have to … I mean, we …”
He waited, but she couldn’t finish the sentence. She looked at him; the dimple above her right eyebrow was trembling. He was hoping that she would … he himself didn’t know what he was hoping.
“And the bad news?”
“Either you and Jill go with me, or I’ll take Jill alone.”
“Go where?” There was alarm in her voice.
“To San Francisco, for a week.”
“Are you crazy? I started work today and can’t take another week off.”
“Then I’ll go alone with Jill.”
She put down the brown shopping bag and put her hands on her hips. “You really are crazy. You and Jill … What are you up to? What do you hope to gain from it?”
“I’m taking Jill as a hostage if you really want to know. As a hostage so that you won’t say a word to anyone until I come back and get away for good. So you don’t run to Joe Benton and betray me.”
“I would never do that. I haven’t done it all the time you’ve been here.”
“I’m taking her as a hostage so you don’t confess to Benton that you copied the Mermoz documents and gave them to me. For that’s exactly what you’ll do tomorrow or the day after.”
“Oh no! I don’t know what game you’re playing, but it won’t work. Even if I wanted to—I just can’t, I have no idea where he keeps the documents, how I could get hold of them, how I should copy them—”
“You can photograph them. You know how to do that. And don’t try telling me you can’t.… You’ve been his lover for years, you still sleep with him, you know he got thirty million from Gorgefield Aircraft, which you couldn’t have learned from the assets report of Townsend Enterprises, you know he arranged Maurin’s murder and …”
“And your cats, don’t forget your cats,” she said. He looked at her, dumbfounded. She again had her shrill little girl’s voice, but at the same time scorn and sheer hatred in her voice and her narrowed eyes. “You on your high horse! You think you’re better than him and better than me. You look down on us. But that’s just the way life is, everyone fights for their own piece of the cake, you too, only not as well! Joe didn’t make the rules!”
“You don’t understand the key point,” he said calmly. “All these years you’ve known Benton well enough to be able to find out where he keeps the Mermoz documents and how you can get hold of them. The point isn’t who made the rules. Okay, Benton didn’t make them, you didn’t make them, I didn’t make them. But the thing is that I’ve finally understood them, just the way you and Benton have long understood them! I have Jill. You get hold of the Mermoz documents. You’ll also get hold of the names of Benton’s contact at Gorgefield Aircraft and a letterhead of Gorgefield’s, a brochure, whatever has the firm’s logo on it. If you want Jill back, you’d better get to it.”
“You really mean it!”
“Yes, Fran, I really mean it.”
“And how do you imagine you and Jill managing in San Francisco?”
“What’s to imagine? There must be thousands of fathers on the road with their little daughters. Once I’m there, I’ll take her along with me if I can’t get a babysitter, and I’ll feed her and change her diapers.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. If you have any advice, I’m all ears. I could buy one of those baby carriers and sling it across my chest—you know the ones I mean.”
They looked at each other. In her glance there was no longer hate, only sadness. Sadness? Georg had seen her frightened, anxious, remote, rejecting, hostile, cheerful, but never sad. If she can look like that, he thought, then she really is Sleeping Beauty behind the hedge of roses. Whether she could gaze happily with the same seriousness and collectedness … Could she? Now her glance pierced though him—Georg would gladly have asked her what she was thinking. Then there was a bright gurgling in her throat, a smothered laugh that she covered with her hand—perhaps she was amused, imagining Georg with Jill in a sling across his chest. But just for a moment.
“If you really do do that, Georg, I’ll never forgive you! Never! To take Jill from me, use her to blackmail me—I can’t find words for how despicable I think that is, how low, how cowardly! You haven’t been able to fight like a … like a man for your piece of the cake, or perhaps you tried and missed out, and now you want to try in some kind of backhanded way, after the fact.… What you didn’t destroy back then in Cucuron you’re destroying now. I know I never should have let myself in for the job in Cucuron, and I ought not to have let it happen between us, or for it to get serious and go on for so long. It was a mistake. I always knew it, but somehow … was it the sex? But never mind. Don’t destroy everything now. Stay here or leave the country—I’ll talk to Joe, and see to it that you can leave without any problems and go back to Cucuron. But don’t take Jill away from me and force me to break into Joe’s safe like a thief!”
“No, Fran. I’m going to bring this to an end. You think it’s already at an end. But it isn’t, not for me.”
Late in the evening she tried once again to change his mind. She tried the next day and the day after. She tried being calm, then with tears and shouting, with reasoning, pleas, threats, swearing, and seduction. Sometimes he noticed with both shock and relief how afraid of him she was, in the same way she was afraid of Benton.
The next day she brought him the letterhead from Gorgefield Aircraft and the name of Benton’s contact there. The day after she brought the cans with the negatives of the construction drawings. On the copies Georg had, the Mermoz logo was barely visible in the lower right corner, where the original had a majestic double-decker plane stamped with the letters M, E, R, M, O, and Z between the upper and lower w
ings. On a copy, Georg pasted on the Gorgefield logo and covered it with White-Out until even the G, whose arc formed the curve of the earth and whose crossbar formed the fuselage of an airplane, could only dimly be made out. He had Fran make a copy of this copy, and to accompany it wrote a short letter on Fran’s typewriter:
Dear Sirs: The enclosed document might interest you. The entire set will be offered for thirty million. Will you bid? Someone who understands the situation and has complete authority will be available for a meeting in San Francisco. Place and time of the meeting will be furnished to you next Wednesday at 10 a.m. Have your telephone operator expect a message with the code name “Rotors.” The deal must be concluded by Friday of next week.
He mulled over whether he should address the letter to “Dear Sir or Madam” or just “Dear Sirs,” and whether the code name “Rotors” was good enough, but both issues were unimportant. Beneath the address, he simply wrote “Re: Attack Helicopter.” He put the letter and the prepared copy in the envelope, addressed it to the Soviet embassy in Washington, and on Wednesday evening dropped it in a mailbox. He did this in the dead of night with Jill on his arm. He sat for a long time in front of a lamp with the negatives Fran had brought, trying to assess their authenticity and completeness. When he rolled them up again and stuck them in the cans, he wasn’t much the wiser.
On Saturday he booked a flight to San Francisco for himself and Jill. He wanted to meet the Russians on Wednesday, but wanted to talk first with Buchanan, Benton’s contact at Gorgefield Aircraft. But before that, he wanted to find a place where he could meet with the Russians. He would need two days to prepare.
After Fran gave up hope of changing Georg’s mind, she tried to stay out of his way. He was prepared to respect that, but it was hard to do in the small apartment. They didn’t utter a word as they sat opposite each other, or when they met at the door between the living room and the bedroom or in the hallway, letting the other go first or passing each other, barely touching, with Fran lowering her eyes: a withered intimacy that made Georg sad. But sometimes he was reminded of girls in ancient or distant cultures who have been promised to a man and are only allowed to show themselves to him after the wedding. Fran was again sleeping in the living room. Days ago, after their initial arguments, when she had aroused him but still had not been able to make him give up his plan, she made a point of sleeping in the living room.
On Friday evening he greeted her according to the ritual of the past week. In the morning he had gone shopping with Jill, also to accustom himself again to the outside world, and had spent the afternoon in the kitchen. He prepared a Cucuron dinner: tapenade on toast, duck Provençale, and chocolate mousse. She was withdrawn and taciturn, and avoided his glance. Later she didn’t come to him in bed. But in the morning he found in his suitcase a baby sling with which he could strap Jill to his chest.
41
AT THE BEGINNING OF THE FLIGHT Jill screamed. She fell asleep when her screaming no longer attracted the other passengers’ sympathy, but their exasperation. A little four-year-old girl tried to interest Jill in picture books and chocolates. An elderly woman gave Georg advice about bringing up children, especially young ladies. The stewardesses brought blankets, kept diapers handy, warmed bottles, and said “coochy-coo.” They spoiled Jill, and they spoiled Georg.
In San Francisco they were picked up by Jonathan and Fern. A friend from Georg’s student years in Heidelberg had studied at Stanford and shared an apartment in San Francisco with Jonathan, who was a painter, and when Georg had phoned his friend with his request, the friend had arranged for him to stay in Jonathan’s apartment. Georg hadn’t wanted to stay in a hotel with Jill. Besides, Jonathan’s girlfriend Fern, an actress, was between jobs and was willing to look after Jill whenever Georg was taking care of his business. She took charge of Jill even before Georg wanted to let her go.
It had been raining in New York when they left, but in San Francisco the sun was shining in a clear blue sky. He left Jill in the renovated warehouse in which Fern and Jonathan were living with a cat and a Doberman, near the bay. The afternoon was before him, and he wanted to start looking for a place to rendezvous with the Russian.
It was clear what kind of place it should be. He wanted to be able to see whether the man was coming alone, so the place had to be open. Georg wanted to be sure that the man couldn’t follow him, so he would have to be able to disappear into a crowd near the place, or be able to reach a parked car on a lightly traveled street. He would drive off, and, if he didn’t see in the rearview mirror a car following him, he would take one of several detours and lose himself in the tangle of streets. That was how he imagined his getaway. Or, alternatively, that he would disappear into the crowd and get to a public toilet and disguise himself again. It would have to be sufficient to shake off one or more Russians. If the Americans had intercepted his letter and listened in on his phone call on Wednesday, and sent hundreds of men and helicopters after him, he wouldn’t have a chance anyway.
He rented a car, got a map of the city, and drove off. At first he drove aimlessly, wherever the flow of traffic or the signs and one-way streets took him. He drove through long streets with two- and three-story apartment buildings. They were of brightly painted wood and adorned with bay windows, gables, and little towers. Business and neon signs suddenly jutted out between the first and second stories, advertising delis, Pepsi-Cola, antiques, dry cleaning, auto-repair shops, breakfast, self-service laundries, real estate, restaurants, picture framing, Budweiser, shoes, fashions, Coca-Cola, and more delis. The businesses and signs disappeared just as suddenly, followed by one apartment block after another. Georg drove through residential streets, shorter than those in Manhattan, the architecture more daring, the streets cleaner and emptier, and the small bits of nature greener. He drove over the hills of the city as excited as if he were on a roller-coaster ride. The topography didn’t match the grid imposed on it, so they pointed up at the sky or down onto other streets. One moment he would be looking down at water, container ships, sailboats, and bridges, and another moment at the silhouettes of skyscrapers merging together at one end of the city, and the many arms with which freeways reached out over and between the buildings, over and under each other. He had the window open and the radio on, and let music and wind whistle about his ears. Sometimes he stopped, and stepped out like a tourist wanting to take a picture. But he only looked to see whether a small place was open enough, or a street lonely enough, or whether a staircase leading down from a steep, hilly street led only to a building or to the next street below.
On Sunday Georg forbade himself to look at the city map. He tried to get a feel for the city and its streets without it. He would have noted a suitable place on the map, but didn’t find any. Still, by evening he had an idea of the peninsula, the ocean to the west, the bay to the east, the Golden Gate Bridge to the north. And he had an idea of how the city had originally grown up in the north, on the bay, and later proliferated over the rest of the peninsula.
On Monday morning, with the city map, he proceeded systematically. He drove through the parks and then along the coast of the Pacific. He found isolated places in Golden Gate Park, but their isolation could only shield them from surprise by a hiker, not a purposeful pursuer. The ocean beach stretched out long and open; gray clouds under a gray sky, gulls beating in the wind, a few joggers, a few hikers, a surfer who never got beyond the first wave, a yellow dredger piling up or carting off sand. But in front of the wall separating the road and the beach there were too many cars parked with people sitting in them. He went to an isolated hot-dog stand, and when the man fished the hot frankfurter from the pot of water the steam rose up in a dense cloud. It was cold here; in the morning Georg had started out from the building on the bay under a blue sky, and in the center of the peninsula had driven into the fog covering the Pacific Coast.
Then he thought he had found the place he was looking for. At the north end of the beach the land was hilly and the coast fell steeply to the
sea, bending inward toward the Golden Gate Bridge and the bay. A street went up to the top of a hill, and Georg stopped in surprise in front of an acropolis. A square of low buildings and a classical arcade, and in the square in front a large circle with an empty fountain basin in the middle, and broad steps leading to the columned portico. He parked his car and walked around the circle. The sun had dissolved the clouds, and through the trees he looked down on the city, the ocean, and the twin red masts and arching roadway of the Golden Gate Bridge. Below him, two helicopters were flying along the shore. From the golf course, which came as far as the acropolis, one sometimes heard the strokes and voices of nearby players, or the soft hum of a golf cart. He could hear occasional cars in the distance coming closer and fading away again. Otherwise it was completely quiet. An enchanted place.
When he went up the steps to the portico he saw that this acropolis was an art museum, and that it was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. He could imagine the cars that would be parked here side by side on Wednesday. And to destroy the enchanted mood, three cars drove up and disgorged a noisy Chinese or Japanese wedding party. He went back to his car. The bride was pretty.
On Monday evening he had grown tired of the city, but more tired of himself and his purposeful, meandering tourism. He liked the city’s clarity that one could almost touch, its fresh cool breeze despite the relentless sunshine, the variety of its districts, cultures, and enticements. He thought one might portray San Francisco as a seductive virgin in starched frills, a virgin simultaneously flaunting and withholding her charms, while New York was an old hag, heavy and squat, sweating, steamy, stinking, babbling incessantly, sometimes screaming. But he was also sick of his perceptions and his useless sensibility. He hadn’t found the place he was looking for. He parked the car and went to Jonathan and Fern’s place. Jill was still awake; he gave her her bottle and changed her diaper on the long table in the kitchen, where he could roll her right and left. He tried to teach her to crawl. She crowed with pleasure. Then he put her down in the wide bed he shared with her. He was anxious lest she fall out, or that he would roll over on her. She followed him into his dreams.