Kaleidoscope (16 page)

“But why?” asked Kate, frowning.

“My dear,” said Madame Karitska, “you have to have belonged to a minority race to understand how things were in those days, perhaps even worse than today, but particularly in a town like Hopetown. There are always prejudices; they seem always with us, they simply change color and history and identity from decade to decade. But gypsies remain anathema in many countries.”

“But Jai, the boy Jai Kostich, was he a gypsy, too?”

“She loved him.”

“You mean he's the one—”

“Definitely, I feel it.
Definitely.
And if she was being ‘discovered' at the age of fifteen she must have already been separated from him by circumstances.”

“I wonder why . . . and how.”

Madame Karitska sighed. “I'm thinking of those mysterious—possibly frantic—trips to Poland that she made, Kate. There must be records, possibly not, and she can no longer tell us. If they scattered and went to Poland—”

“Poland!”
gasped Kate.

“It wouldn't have been a fortunate choice, Kate, for it wasn't only Jews who were being sent to the concentration camps; half a million gypsies ended up in the ovens, and in Poland they were sent to Dachau. In 1939.”

Kate's head jerked up in shock. “In 1939?”

Madame Karitska nodded. “I think she traveled— somehow—to Poland in 1939 to look for Jai. Whom she loved.”

“Oh God,” murmured Kate. “And didn't find him?”

“And again when the war was over, and she was twenty-five.”

“And still missing!”

“And five years later married her director Vladimir Mirkov.”

“With a broken heart,” whispered Kate.

“And that's the secret your mother kept—out of love for her. And out of love for her and her loyalty, Kitta Sinka sent your mother every year a Christmas card with a sprig of rosemary.”

“For remembrance,” said Kate, still stricken. “But it's so
sad
,” she cried. “The only man she loved! And so passionately, so completely.”

“And yet . . .” began Madame Karitska, “and yet . . .”

“Yet what?”

“How would you have ended the story?”

Kate said, “Why, by—” She stopped frowning.

Madame Karitska nodded. “I don't think they ever lost each other, I like to believe so—but he could never have been confined to
her
world, and if she remained Kitta Sinka just think of what the world—all of us— would have lost . . . and do you think she could have left audiences of thousands in tears, when she played tragedies, if she'd not experienced devastating loss herself ? But they
loved
. . . and if you understand that, as well as your mother so lovingly protecting her all those years, you will understand the real mystery of Charmian Cowper. And of love.”

“I only feel like crying,” admitted Kate.

Madame Karitska smiled and rose. “Then it's time I brewed that Turkish coffee that I promised you. You'll find it very potent and distracting.” Hearing a knock on her door she added, “Mind seeing who that is, Kate? I'm not expecting any client.”

Busy in the kitchen, she heard Kate call to her, “It's a young man delivering flowers to you.”

Not Amos again,
thought Madame Karitska, and leaving the coffee to brew she walked back into the living room, to find a familiar young man holding an enormous bouquet of flowers for her. “John!” she exclaimed. “John Painter!”

He grinned at her. “You once introduced me to the police as Miroslav Khudoznik, the Russian word for painter being Khudoznik, remember? Or so you said. Or shouldn't I remind you of my indiscretions . . . Am I interupting something? I brought you flowers because my recording, ‘Once in Old Atlantis,' has gone gold. Sold so many I'm not just Top Ten but I've a gold record—and I owe it to— Who are
you
?” he asked Kate abruptly.

“Kate, this is John Painter—”

“Oh, I knew that at
once
,” said Kate. “I'm Kate Margus.”

“Kate,” said Madame Karitska, opening a cabinet in search of a vase, “is writing a biography of Charmian Cowper, and I've been helping her to identify a few items from Miss Cowper's trunk, which she inherited.”

“You knew her?” gasped Painter. “No, you couldn't have, you're too young. How on earth did you inherit a trunk of hers?”

“My mother,” Kate told him proudly. “She was a wonderful singer, too, wasn't she? You've heard her?”

“These are gorgeous flowers,” Madame Karitska told him, “but you've brought me so many I shall have to divide them and use two vases.”

But John Painter wasn't listening. “
Heard
Charmian Cowper? I idolize that woman. What's more,” he told Kate, “I've the pleasure of owning a recording of her singing ‘Night of Love,' and ‘Gypsy's Lament.' ”

“But she didn't make any recordings,” said Kate firmly. “I'd have known, I really would, because I've been doing research on her for weeks and weeks.”

He laughed. “Obviously you don't know how devious we fans can be. What I own is a bootleg recording that was sneakily recorded at one of her 1972 concerts in Scandinavia, one of the very few she gave. No,
I
didn't record it, but one of the fun things about money—having it, I mean—is that I bought it for a small fortune. The sound is a little muffled, but believe me, she's still great. Like to hear it?” He turned to Madame Karitska. “You, too? I could bring it here, or you could come to my studio apartment.”

“I'd love to hear it,” said Kate breathlessly. “An actual recording! Bliss.”

Madame Karitska smiled at them over the bouquet of flowers she was arranging in a vase, and recklessly told them a lie. “Take Kate with you,” she told him. “I've a client coming soon, and after all, it's Kate who is writing her biography.”

“Want to come now?” asked John Painter of Kate.

“Love to.”

They were regarding each other with more than casual interest, which intrigued her.

“Do you have a title for the biography yet?” he asked Kate.

She looked at Madame Karitska and smiled. “I'm thinking of calling it
Charmian Cowper: The Story of
Kitta Sinka
.”

“You'll have to explain
that
to me,” he told her, and with a nod and a smile and a wink for Madame Karitska he escorted Kate out of the room and they were gone, leaving behind a scent of flowers and a deflation of the electricity that had flowed between the two upon meeting.

14

Madame Karitska had hesitated for a long time to establish fees for her work. Being new on Eighth Street, and unknown for a number of weeks, she had charged very little, often leaving it up to her clients to contribute what they could afford. Now that her readings had multiplied, and her reputation expanded beyond Eighth Street, many of her clients were prosperous, and some she found downright frivolous, wanting only to ask when they were going to meet that wonderful man they would marry, and with whom they would live happily forever after. In their case she wished she could send them to the carnival out in the Edgerton section, where a fortune-teller would tell them exactly what they wanted to hear, but this was Eighth Street, not Cavendish Square, and she kept her fees modest and her readings honest, refusing to look too far into the future unless she foresaw danger. This was not only out of principle but because it needed more than psychometry; it needed an almost trancelike state that was depleting. She preferred to decipher the past and the present, and frankly told her clients so.

“Because,” as she explained, not entirely truthfully, “what you do with
now
creates your future,” which at least encouraged them to wake up to a life they were all too often moving through like sleepwalkers.

Waking on Monday morning, Madame Karitska considered her schedule for this day with unusual curiousity. At ten o'clock she would meet the mysterious Mr. Smith—in her experience almost everyone who gave the name of Smith was not really a Smith— and in late afternoon she planned to visit Help Save Tomorrow, since at noon tomorrow Laurie Faber-Jones would have completed her tenth day of enforced labor at the shop with Daniel. She wondered if Laurie would be ready at last to return to college, or at the very least understand that she had lived a very privileged life and that it was time for her to regard it with a shade more humility. Obviously Daniel had taken good care of her; the three boys had
not
tipped over her ladder when she was hanging the sign—Daniel would have seen to that—but other than hanging a sign Laurie could very well have spent most of the ten days reading a book in a corner and sulking. There was no way of knowing, and she had resisted any further strolls to Sixth Street to observe.

Promptly at ten o'clock there was a firm knock on her door, and Madame Karitska prepared herself to meet Mr. Smith, but a surprise awaited her. Opening the door she found a familiar figure standing there and exclaimed, “Roger Gillespie!
You're
Mr. Smith?”

“My secretary was playful,” he said, smiling. “May I come in?”

“Of course—in fact, welcome,” she told him, not believing at all that it was his secretary who had been playful.

Once inside he closed the door firmly behind him, saying, “I've not forgotten—startled as I was—how you retrieved a scene from my past simply by holding a piece of shrapnel, and it's occurred to us that possibly your talent may be useful. We badly need some help that we hope you can give us, help that could save us invaluable time and research.”

“If I can, I'd be happy to,” she said, curious to say the least, and invited him to leave his guardlike stance by the door and move to a couch. “You've been well?” she asked, as he sat down and placed a briefcase on the coffee table. To ease the tension that he'd brought with him into the room she added, “I've just made a pot of coffee. Cream or sugar?”

“Black,” he said absently, zipping open his briefcase.

She placed the carafe on the table with two cups, sat down opposite him, folded her hands and waited.

With a frown he said, “I can only hope you remember something of the worries I described at Mr. Faber-Jones's party?”

“Vividly,” she responded.

“Good. It saves so much time.” Placing a sheaf of papers on the table he explained, “I have here the resignations, or similar documents, from eleven very talented men who for years had worked with long-established electronic firms but have resigned, presumably to start their own companies.”

“And you think one of them . . . You spoke of ‘rogue' geniuses?”

“Yes,” he said. “I'll be frank. We've assumed that our mischief makers, if we're correct, would situate themselves as far from cities as possible—and from us,” he added dryly. “We've been combing the Midwest, a lot of small towns there, and the public-service companies—those people who send your monthly bills—have been served notice to report any unusually high electric bills.”

“Electric?”

He said wryly, “Ironically, they would need an abnormal amount of power to build a machine that could, in turn, wipe out a nation's electricity.”

“Ironic, yes,” she agreed, still not understanding what he had in mind for her.

He drew one sheet of paper from the table, and eyeing her closely handed it to her. “This man—I won't use the names of any corporations—was a top man, one of their so-called geniuses.” He handed it to her. “From only a signature can you tell me anything? Otherwise there's no hope of your aid.”

Placing her hand on the signature she closed her eyes. “What a strange mind,” she murmured, “full of such strange words . . . circuits, databases, PCs . . .” Without further comment she concentrated on deeper impressions reaching her. A brilliant man . . . sad about leaving . . . She opened her eyes. “But he is very ill; I've not read his letter but—oh,
very
ill, and—”

“No need,” he told her, and for the first time smiled. “I was testing you. My apologies;
very
ill, in fact since then he has unfortunately died.” He reached for the carafe of coffee and poured himself a cup. “Shall we get down to business now?”

She looked at him and laughed. “Very foxy, Mr. Gillespie.”

He did not smile. “I have to say that I'm deeply relieved that signatures alone can speak.” Becoming professional again he continued. “We decided to go no farther back than two years, so I hand you eleven letters—”

“Two years!” she exclaimed.

He nodded. “We had to set a limit to our queries, which have taken months to collect and assimilate. It also needed a great deal of time to capture the
original
signatures, rather than machine copies.” He frowned. “Perhaps I was thinking of you even then, having realized that copies are never the same as originals.”

“No,” she said, taking the sheaf of papers he handed to her.

He gestured toward what he had given her and said ruefully, “What I've just handed you are the signatures of eleven men with IQs of probably two hundred, or possibly the intelligent quotient would slide off the charts completely. There have been others, but we were able to trace them satisfactorily. These eleven supposedly left to start their own electronic companies, with names of”—referring to his notes—“names of Pockets, Splash, HiTech, Dazzle, CoCo, and other improbable names. And to learn this much,” he added, “my men had to haunt innumerable bars to strike up conversations with men or women who had worked with these eleven. But so far none of those companies has gone public, been listed on any stock exchanges, here or abroad, or been heard of by my friends, which we find of interest.”

Puzzled, she asked, “But surely there were home addresses? You made no effort to find and approach and interview these people?”

He sighed. “My suspicions of this,” he said, nodding toward the papers in her lap, “used to be simply a gut feeling, because of my concern—and for some years—of the government's complacency in this area: our growing dependency on electricity, so ripe for terrorism, and terrorism is my business. But during the past two years it's become far more than a gut feeling, due to sources I can't name. Yet nobody's interested except my department. Or open to it. Or considers it possible. If we personally visited and interviewed each of these men . . .” He shook his head. “Disaster. They're no fools; I'd lose them. The one man—or men—we're looking for would go underground.”

She smiled faintly. “So you operate on rumors, theories, suspicions, imagination, and intelligence of your own.” Which, she decided, made him undoubtedly a genius, too. “You really believe in this.”

“Oh yes.”

“And what do you hope from me?”

He sighed. “I don't know. . . . What peculiarities or obsessions does a genius lock in his brain that might show up in a signature?”

She nodded. “Then let's start, shall we? So long as these are the original signatures. Have some coffee, this will take time.”

Concentrating deeply on the first signed letter she closed her eyes and frowned. “Toys,” she said. “
Toys?
This man is very excited, very certain; I see drawings of toys, very technical ones, games I think—on a computer? Are there such things?”

“Video games, yes,” and with a glance at his notes Gillespie said, “Possibly this is the man who told friends his new firm would be called CoCo. Go on.”

Removing the second letter she held it and after a few minutes smiled. “I don't feel this is your man, he's too serene. A very spiritual man, I think, quite dreamy and absentminded except in his work.”

“That sounds innocuous—for the moment. Go on.”

“Letter number three?” Eyes closed she said at last, “This man—oh
very
ambitious. Angry, too. Really, a handwriting analyst would have told you this at once . . . and full of resentment. An angry, brilliant man. It could be he.”

Gillespie nodded. “His letter of resignation is certainly brief and very curt. Whatever he planned hasn't materialized—not yet at least. I'll check-mark him. Go on.”

“Letter number four,” she said. “This man—I gain a very distinct impression that he's an independent sort of man, bored with authority, determined to be on his own, as if the company's grown too big for him now. No other impressions.”

“But another possibility,” concluded Gillespie. “Try number five.”

Madame Karitska nodded, and placed her hands on the signature of number five, and felt a jolt.

“What is it?” demanded Gillespie. “Are you ill?”

“This . . . this one,” she faltered. “How astonishing! This one is familiar; this one I've ‘felt' before.”

“What do you mean, ‘felt before'?”

“Here, in this room. A brilliant, half-mad brilliance, and—” She stopped and looked at Gillespie. “I'm sorry, it shocked me then, it shocks me now. A certain maliciousness, destructive, and certainly a genius, but—”

Gillespie said in a hard voice, “I think you'd better tell me about this.” He poured a cup of coffee and handed it to her. “Drink it,” he told her. “You've gone as white as the proverbial sheet.”

She took a sip of coffee and nodded. “Sorry. Let's see, it happened probably two months ago. It was a woman, quite rude—and rich,” she added, and lifted both hands to press them against her temple. “There have been so many since then; let me think.” Slowly the memory of it returned to her. “Her name was Anna, she very pointedly said she'd not give her last name, she'd come in a taxi, which was waiting for her. And what she'd come to ask me was . . . oh yes, if her husband had met another woman, because she insisted they were very happily married but she so rarely saw him.”

When she hesitated, still trying to recall details, he said, “She'd brought something of his you would work with?”

“A wristwatch, yes. Old, very shabby. And I experienced this same shock.”

“Go on.”

“She kept telling me what a genius he was, and— yes, she said that with two friends he was starting an electronic company.” She frowned. “In any case, he came home so rarely she was sure there had to be another woman.”

“Keep thinking,” Gillespie told her.

“You really think—”

“From your reaction, it's possible. Did she happen to mention where this company was being started? In Trafton, for instance?”

“Oh no.” She frowned. “She did, yes . . . Maine. As she was about to leave she said she couldn't understand why it had to be Maine.”

“Maine!”

“Yes . . . a small town,” she said. “I wish I could remember the name she gave . . . Digby? Danby? Denby? Darby? I reassured her there was no other woman, it was his work that kept him away and she definitely said Maine.”

“Or so he told her,” murmured Gillespie, and in exasperation said, “We didn't think of Maine, damn it. She didn't give her last name?”

“Only her first name, Anna.”

“Never mind, he'll be on our list. And the impression you received alarmed you?”

She nodded. “A mind that never stilled . . . feverish . . . an impression, too, of malice—and danger.” She shivered. “As she opened her purse to pay me, a number of memos drifted to the floor. One of them was left behind, and in case she returned for it . . .” She rose and went to her bookcase. “It's still here. Strange,” she said, looking it over, “it has a list very much like the one Tanya mentioned at the party. Fire-wood, kerosene lamps, candles . . .” She gave it to him.