We pulled off the drive. The city surrounded us. We drove beneath vaulting walls of concrete. Holloway’s hands had relaxed on the wheel now. His stare had softened. His mouth relaxed, too. He lifted his eyes to look at the buildings looming above us.
Softly, he said to me: “All these people, Wells. They just don’t know.”
“So what was it?” I asked him.
“Hm?”
“Between Colt and Paul? What was between the two of them?”
For a moment Holloway didn’t answer. He seemed lost in his own reflections. Finally, though, he blinked. He glanced at me.
“I can’t say for sure,” he said. “But if I had to guess?”
“Yeah?”
“I’d say it was Eleanora.”
She is a woman who lives in the shadows, who lives with fear. In this small country where the fabric of daily life is often torn to pieces by the sudden cruelties of war, she is a source of hope to some and the target of others’ hatred. In a nation where there seems no middle ground between oppressive government and savage revolution, Eleanora Richardson is that middle ground—gone underground.
I sat in the reading room of the public library. A vast room that soared over towering mullioned windows up to ornate ceilings far distant overhead. At the bottom of that cavernous space, I sat hunkered before a microfilm viewer. I squinted through its glare at the newspaper page projected onto the surface below. It was a copy of the Boston Globe, over a decade old. The Globe had picked up a series Colt had sold to the wires. His series on the underground in Sentu. This was the lead piece on Eleanora.
I went back to the story.
Virtually single-handed, Miss Richardson oversees a secret network of safe houses through which pass revolutionaries targeted for arrest and torture, petty government officials targeted for assassination, and, most frequently, some of the vast number of homeless refugees left orphaned, widowed, and injured by war. With Miss Richardson and her people, they find medical attention, solace, and, sometimes, a chance to resettle elsewhere.
An Englishwoman, Miss Richardson came to Africa seven years ago, a twenty-two-year-old missionary for the Anglican Church. She found herself on a continent volcanic with revolution. In Rhodesia first, and later Zambia and Angola, she made attempts to operate openly under the auspices of the church, helping to run schools, infirmaries, and food centers. Soon, however, various victims of national violence began coming to her for help, attracted by her nonpartisan sense of charity. They came one by one, and then by the dozens. She found herself operating subterranean sanctuaries while maintaining a public show of aboveboard missionary work.
In the last four years, however, this has become impossible. Hounded from nation to nation, Miss Richardson has been forced to sever all ties with the church, and to relinquish much of her contact with the everyday life of men and women.
The cellar of her quiet suburban home has been turned into an infirmary of fifteen beds. Some of the people there on one recent day were suffering from gunshot wounds. Some of them were children. Miss Richardson assured them that a “safe” doctor would be with them before the day was done.
Sitting upstairs in a living room darkened by drawn curtains, with her hair disheveled, her forehead grimy, and her white apron stained with blood, she consented to an interview. She was reluctant to speak in detail about her life, fearing she would inadvertently reveal information that might make her or her operation more vulnerable. She did, however, discuss her past and present situation in general terms, saying that the greatest difficulty of the life she has chosen is her separation from her home, her parents, two brothers, and a sister.
“The worst of it, believe it or not, is not being able to keep in touch with your loved ones,” she said. “Letters get through now and then, but you can go as long as six months, more, without a word. It gets terribly lonely sometimes, and that’s when the fear gets to you. You find yourself thinking, ‘All right, I’ll pack it in.’ But, of course, you don’t, do you?”
I sat back in my hard wood chair. I looked around me. There were rows and rows of viewers on the desk. There were rows and rows of desks. There were people passing among the shelves. There was steady movement, steady murmuring.
For a second I felt as if I had come up from underwater, or out of a movie in the afternoon: I was surprised to see the light. I’d been involved in the piece. I’d imagined Eleanora sitting in the darkened living room. I’d heard her voice. I’d heard it very clearly, in fact. It was a calm, gentle voice. It had no fear in it.
I blinked the feeling away. I leaned forward.
Nothing in her background prepared her for this life. The daughter of an Essex County minister and his wife, she grew up in the rectory of a rural church. She speaks fondly of playing with the sons and daughters of farmers.
“I was a bit the P.K., you know,” she said, smiling. “The preacher’s kid. The other children accepted me well enough, but I was always the one they turned to to settle their arguments or make the rules of the game. It gives one a tremendous sense of gravity and responsibility very young. Not easy to get rid of it, I suppose.”
Strongly influenced by a father she describes as “witty, unpretentious, and kind,” she became intensely religious in her youth. She left the country shortly after graduating from Girton with the idea of spreading the gospel among the disadvantaged.
“I’m afraid I was not very enlightened,” she says now. “I had this idea that there were all these unhappy Africans, you know, and they were just waiting for me. I suppose I felt that all they really wanted was for someone to come along with the love of Christ in her satchel and sort of spread it around here and there.”
She says she is still religious, but that she does not preach much or teach the Bible anymore. “I can’t tell a five-year-old who hasn’t eaten for a week about the love of Christ. I can’t tell a woman who’s just seen her daughter bayoneted that He works in mysterious ways. I just can’t. One simply reaches a point, you know, where one feels that if Christ is anywhere, He’s in one’s hands. One’s actions. If He wanted His name mentioned all the time, He would have gone into films.”
I laughed softly. Then I stopped laughing, the smile pasted to my face. I thought about her talking like that, with her golden hair disheveled and her forehead begrimed. I thought about her white skin and how it blushed red when she made love.
I shifted uncomfortably on the chair. I took a breath, focused my attention, and leaned into the glare of the machine again.
In Sentu, Miss Richardson’s organization is thought to be particularly pervasive. She is spoken of in almost legendary terms among natives and Westerners alike. She shrugged off such celebrity and declined to discuss the extent of her network. She did admit that she did not “start from scratch here,” and used experience and the remnants of previous networks to establish herself quickly.
In Sentu, she said she has found a situation that is far from unique in Africa, or in the world: a mixture of real injustices and ambiguous politics boiling over into violence. Again and again, she has refused to take sides, and she said she has even rejected appeals by several governments to allow them to use her network as a base for undercover operations.
“Each side always seems to feel that this or that adjustment to the local machinery will make things all right,” she said. “Even when they recognize the complexities, they still see no alternative but to operate within that machinery, to tinker with it this way or that. That’s what justifies the violence in their minds: the seeming nearness of the goal. But, of course, the machinery of injustice, of hatred, of cruelty—these aren’t local at all, are they. They’re worldwide. They’re not built in Sentu or Rhodesia or Zambia. We build them here—in the heart. My heart. All of ours.”
She paused, reflected, then let out a surprisingly girlish giggle, bringing one hand to her mouth with the modesty of a preacher’s daughter.
“Listen to me go on,” she said, laughing. “I suppose I’m still a mission
ary, after all. Only it turns out I didn’t come here to save Africa, did I? I came here to save myself.”
I shook my head. My hand went out to touch the last words of the article. The shadow cast by my fingers wiped the words away. I gazed at that shadow. I was not thinking of Eleanora now. I was thinking of Colt. I was thinking of him again as he stumbled to the door of his bedroom on the last night of his life. Staggering under the weight of alcohol, and under the burden of his loss.
Eleanora. Eleanora, my love, my love.
Poor bastard, I thought. Meeting someone like her. Losing someone like her. He must have loved her pretty damned desperately.
What else could he have done?
That night, I met with Lester Paul.
He’d said ten o’clock. I left the office around nine-fifteen. I wanted to be there first, to scout the place. I grabbed a cab on Vanderbilt. We headed to Madison, then started uptown.
The air was crisp and cold. The night sky was clear. There was no moon that I could see. Rush hour was over, but the sidewalks were still crowded with Christmas shoppers. Some of them carried stacks of packages in their arms or gripped shopping bags in their hands. They looked warm in their overcoats and scarves.
There were lights everywhere. There were colored lights in the store windows. There were white lights on some of the trees. There were golden lights around the gates of the Helmsley Palace Hotel. Spotlights blanketed the stone spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Red taillights sped along in front of us. Green traffic lights hung overhead.
There were lights everywhere. But somehow, two stood out. Two headlights. They’d been following me since I left the Star.
I don’t know why I noticed them. Maybe I’d been watching for it, expecting it without thinking. I’d witnessed a murder, after all. I knew I was a target. Maybe I was just naturally on my guard.
One way or another, when my cab pulled away from the Star, I glanced over my shoulder. Through the rear window, I saw the two headlights pull into traffic, too. As we moved toward Madison, so did they. As we headed uptown, they did, too. I didn’t think much of it at first. I just noticed.
We passed under the AT&T building, a rose marble tower turned to shadow in the night. Two trees in its open courtyard glittered with lights behind its heavy columns. I glanced back at the headlights. They were still there.
The cab had pulled into the left lane. So had the headlights following. The cab signaled to turn left on Fifty-seventh Street. The headlights edged even further to the left, as if to turn also.
“Go up and through the park,” I said.
“Eh?” said the hack.
“Don’t turn.”
He clicked off his signal. He pulled into the center lane The headlights behind us did not make the turn either. They followed us.
“Listen,” I said to the back of the driver’s head. “There’s a guy tailing us. Can you lose him?”
“Tailing?” the cabbie said in a thick Levantine accent.
“Yeah, it’s worth a dime.”
“You no want de Natwal Histry.”
“No,” I said. “Just lose this guy.”
“Lewis Guy?” asked the cabbie. “I no know this place.”
“Pull over,” I said.
We went by the rear exit of F.A.O. Schwarz in the General Motors Building. Stuffed bears and giraffes peered down at me from the second-story window. The cab pulled to the curb.
I shoved some money over the seat in front of me.
“Uh, Lewis Guy?” said the driver.
“Keep the change,” I said.
I got out of the cab. As I closed the door behind me, the headlights went past. I saw a low, sleek, dark-colored car cruise up Madison. I watched its taillights. They turned left one block up, on Fifty-ninth Street.
I glanced at my watch. It was 9:25. Whoever was after me, I had to ditch him fast. If Paul thought I’d brought anyone with me, he might keep his promise to blow my brains out. I needed my brains in case I ever decided to go into another line of work.
I shoved my hands in my overcoat pockets, started walking quickly toward Fifth.
I got to the corner. It was bright and noisy there. The street opened up into Grand Army Plaza. The glass lance of the G.M. Building shot into the sky beside me. The bronze nude of the plaza fountain was surrounded by lighted trees across the way. There were sidewalk Santas ringing bells. The Salvation Army was blowing brass. Shoppers were following the wisps of their breath through the night. All the stores around were open late.
The low, sleek, dark-colored car turned the corner. It rolled onto the Avenue just ahead of me.
I froze. I watched. The passenger door cracked open. Timing the traffic, a slim man slipped into the street. He sidled around the car to the sidewalk. I saw him craning his neck, looking for me. I looked away. I pretended to study the front entrance of the toy store. Shoppers were streaming into the revolving doors and the two other doors that flanked it. A man dressed up as a toy soldier opened the right door and saluted the people going in. A woman dressed up as a clown opened the left door and made faces at the people coming out.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the dark car join the traffic. It eased down Fifth Avenue and was gone. The man who had gotten out moved to the railing of the G.M. Building’s sunken courtyard. He leaned over it, pretending to look at the make-believe ice pond and the mannequin skaters set up below.
He was not the man who had killed Timothy Colt. But he looked enough like him to make my gut feel like a cold draft had blown through it. He was small and wiry. He had dark skin. His hair was close-cropped. His eyes were fierce and deep. He seemed even younger than the assassin I had battled in Colt’s hotel. He was a kid, maybe seventeen or so. All the same, the aches and pains that had sunk into the back of my mind these past hours now rose to the forefront again. I was in no shape for another fight.
He looked over the railing. Christmas music drifted up from below. “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” The kid was waiting. He was waiting for me to move.
I moved. I headed toward F.A.O. Schwarz.
The toy soldier opened the door for me. He was a young guy. He wore a bright red uniform and a black busby. He had pink spots painted on his cheeks. He saluted.
“I love a man in uniform,” I said.
“Hey, it’s a job, all right?” he muttered.
I went inside.
I came into a large bright room. At its center was an enormous mechanical clock. Its big peach-colored face had eyes and a mouth. It spun and moved and sang. The big clock was covered with mechanical toys. They spun and moved and sang, too. Jack-in-the-boxes popped. Ballerinas twirled. Cars raced. A hot-air balloon rose and sank down. All the while, this tune kept playing. This happy little tune about boys and girls and toys.
Around the clock, the shoppers moved to and fro with their brightly wrapped boxes. Stuffed animals—red mice, yellow giraffes, black bears, orange tigers, and dinosaurs of every color—lay on shelves, hung over ledges, sat beneath windows. They watched the shoppers go.
I moved toward the clock. I glanced over my shoulder. The toy soldier outside saluted again. He opened the door and admitted the punk who was following me.
The punk had made a mistake. He’d panicked when I went inside. He’d come after me too quickly. Now we saw each other over the shoppers passing back and forth. We gazed at each other for a long moment.
He was afraid. I saw it. It was in his eyes. His mouth was open. His tongue kept darting forward to wet his lips. He was not as cool as his assassin buddy.
He had to decide what to do quickly. He decided. He came at me.
I turned away. A doting grandmother carrying an elephant tottered toward the cashier. An eager father rushed the other way toward the dinosaurs. I slipped between them and headed around the clock. The clock sang its little song.
I thought I’d find the rear exit now. It wasn’t there. The way out seemed to have vanished. There was nothing against the back wall but a glass elevator. T
o the left was an escalator heading up to the second floor. At the base of it, a mechanical teddy bear said, “Oh, I do love robots! They’re on the second floor! Merry Christmas.”
I went for the elevator. I didn’t look back. The floor felt slippery under my shoes as I dodged a young man with a tiger under each arm.
The doors to the elevator were on the other side, facing the rear wall. I was lucky. They opened just as I came around to them. I jumped inside and pressed the button marked two.
The elevator rose swiftly. I looked out through the glass wall. The wide, bright floor full of animals dropped away beneath me. As it did, I saw the punk come around the singing clock. He searched for me desperately. He looked up and spotted me as I rose into the air. He dashed toward the talking teddy bear. He began to shove and weave his way through the crowd on the escalator.
Second floor. The door slid open. I shot out into the glassy stares of a thousand golden-haired dolls. Some of them chattered at me in singsong voices. I slid past the knot of people waiting for the lift. I cut left, passing the top of the escalator. I looked down there as I went by. The crowd was rippling with the punk’s progress through it. He was about halfway to the top.
I didn’t stop to meet him. I walked on as fast as I could. I had to dump this charmer. Had to find the rear door. Get out, make my date. Meet with Paul alone.
Now I was barreling down a wild hallway. Lights blinked. Plastic figures larger than life turned this way and that to either side of me. A cowboy, an Eskimo, an astronaut flashed by me as I humped along.
I reached the hallway’s end. The punk topped the escalator. A woman cried out as he shoved her aside. He started swiftly down the hall.
I swung around. Before me was a vast array of electric trains. Big ones trudged from signal light to signal light. Tiny silver streaks zipped through miniature villages in the Alps. There was an old freight rattling round an oval. I almost stopped to ogle them. I didn’t. I skittered past the train tables. Turned, kept walking.