Krysalis: Krysalis (17 page)

David gazed at him in astonishment. “Yes! And I … I was sitting six inches above my seat, you know that feeling? And I reached out for her hand and she took it between both her own and I couldn’t breathe.” David swiveled until he was facing Albert, as if appealing for,
demanding,
empathy. “And then I knew … I knew I loved her,” he said simply. “And the feeling never went away. It never left me. Whenever I’ve been with Anna since, I’ve been … been sitting six inches above the chair. All the time.” His voice slowed, subtly
telling Albert that he had given up all hope of ever explaining to another human being how he felt.

A memory came into Albert’s mind, astonishing him with its singular inappropriateness.

The worst four days of his life, spent undercover in Teheran. For a mercifully short few minutes he had been forced to stand within a foot of one of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s most powerful clergymen. Looking into his eyes, Albert saw something that he ever afterward styled “the sacred flame.” It had been his job to extinguish it, which he’d done, but he never forgot the sight. He hadn’t seen anything even remotely resembling it. Until this moment.

Examining David from under lowered lids, Albert realized that perhaps the memory was not so anachronistic, after all.

“When was the last time?” he ventured at last.

“Mm?”

“The last time Anna told you she loved you, when?”

David wiped a hand across his face. It was as if Albert had addressed him in a foreign language and he was still catching up. “Last weekend, on the phone. Saturday.”

“Three days ago … so you expressed your affection to each other often, is that right?”
Interesting …

“Yes.”

“She didn’t have anyone else?”

“A lover, you mean?”

“That’s right.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

This response nettled Albert, he’d been doing well up until then. “You can answer me straight, or you can have it wrung out of you, under oath.”

David breathed in and out sharply, once. “No lover that I’m aware of.”

But Albert, sensing blood, couldn’t leave it alone. “There may have been, in other words?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“But it was a cagey answer, ‘no lover that I’m—’”

“Oh, this is insane! All I meant was, I didn’t spend every second of every day in Anna’s presence. Of course she
might
have had a lover; it was logistically feasible. But I don’t believe it for a moment. Besides, the things you’re asking about are purely personal.”

“In a case like this, nothing is purely personal.”

“I’ve got nothing more to say.” David’s voice was stony, matching his expression.

“At the inquiry—”

“I’ll cope with questions then.”

David’s limbs were trembling. He suddenly stood up and moved a few steps away from Albert, keeping his back to him. When he turned around again, the water was clearly visible in his eyes.

“Sorry.” His voice came out uneven. “Not the emotional type, usually.”

Albert saw that he wasn’t going to get any further, and suppressed his resentment with difficulty. “It’s understandable,” he conceded.

“Yes.” A shiver interrupted David’s next words; after a pause, he tried again. “If you want the truth, I miss her … too much.”

Albert frowned.
“Too
much …?”

“I can’t manage without her. Childish …”

Albert allowed the pause to go on a little longer, again pitted by that odd flash of hitherto unencountered jealousy. Then he said, “I think you’ve answered my question, but just for the record, did you or do you have a mistress?”

“Certainly not. To
both
questions.”

“So.” Albert tilted his head backward until he was staring at the sky. “Whatever she was running away from, it wasn’t an unhappy marriage.” No easy answers here.
Damn!

“I don’t get that.” David had recovered from the weakness of a moment ago, his tone was harsh. “What makes you so sure she ran away?”

Albert brought his head forward again. “You seemed to be saying that yourself.”

“Oh, look, I’m sick of this. My wife’s missing, the police don’t want to know, your people don’t care, it’s like a nightmare.” David’s voice cracked. “What has to happen before someone does something? Eh? You just tell me,
what!”

He was shaking. Albert looked up at him with detached professional interest. “What are you going to do?” he said.

“I’m going to find her. In my way, and without any help from you.”

“I think that’s an excellent idea.”

David had already stalked off, but on hearing those words he stopped and wheeled around.

“You know a lot more people it might be worth talking to than we do,” Albert said, standing up. “Eddy, for example. Anna’s first husband. Unless, of course …” He appeared struck with his own flash of brilliance. “Unless you felt like letting me share the labor.”

He already had a hand through David’s elbow and was guiding him toward the Mall. “We should talk about that,” he said. And then suddenly his resentment at liking this man against his will boiled over into needless brutality, making him show more of his hand than he’d intended. “There’s still time,” he rapped,
“there’s still time for a discussion of that before your appointment with her head of chambers this evening.”

David’s expression of shock on realizing how much the other man knew about his private affairs was Albert’s only real consolation for a drawn match.

CHAPTER
13

By lunchtime on Tuesday, the day after their flight, the BBC world service still had nothing to say about Anna Lescombe’s disappearance. Gerhard, in a peevish mood, turned off the radio with undue vehemence, toppling it over.

Iannis must have sent the fax by now. How much did London want their file? What would Barzel be doing?

Barzel didn’t know about this villa, no one did. Gerhard, who had dedicated half his life to finding out other people’s secrets, knew how to keep his own. But given enough time, enough resources, HVA would find him.

How long before MI6 made up their minds?
How much time before Barzel came here and killed them?

Gerhard, needing a distraction from the terror that had begun to grind in his guts, got up and went to stand by the balustrade.

Anna had found something to intrigue her in the rocks clustered at the foot of the cliff below the church.
From his vantage point on the terrace, Gerhard could sometimes see her, sometimes not, as she swam in and out of his vision. It was ever so, she had always presented herself to him in fits and starts.

He remembered the first time he’d met her as if it were yesterday.

Sixteen years ago she had come into his consulting room, dragging her steps, and she had looked around with a bored look, as if to say, “Go on, then, show me.” When her eyes did at last become still, he had smiled into them, acknowledging her as a person who commanded his full attention, but she had not returned the greeting. He recognized straightaway that, no matter how far she might neglect herself (and it was very far, then), she appealed to his sense of all that was superb in a young woman. Nothing could contain such a spirit, once it began to soar. That was his task: to set her free.

She had borne with him listlessly while he went through the opening formalities, name, address, age—she was twenty-three, then—but after he fell silent, she offered nothing, waiting for him to point the way.

“I want to talk about some myths,” he had said. “Myths surrounding psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, what they are and what they are not.”

She said nothing, nor did she nod.

“You are not mad. I’m not a psychiatrist. It’s important you understand that. Your postnatal depression, however severe, means only that you are functioning at less than your best.”

He paused, but she continued to stare into space as if he were not present.

“Our sessions together will occur at the same time each week and will last exactly one hour. This is because the patient after you wants me to be punctual
and I must respect that wish, just as I respect your wish that I should always be on time for you. It is one way of saying that I can be relied upon.”

“I see. Thank you.”

He noted “relied = trigger” on his pad and continued, “It is unlikely that you will still be in therapy six months from now. If, after that, you haven’t conquered the hostility you feel toward your child, if you’re not enjoying your life more, there will be little point in our continuing.”

He had said something that mattered. Her eyes were wide open and she was looking at him properly. “I thought … I’m sorry, I thought it would take years. Always took years.”

“No. Myth number one.”

“How will we know when it’s over?”

“Therapist and patient know when the time has come to part. Always. Next, myth number two: that therapy is pleasurable. Therapy is hard work. Unpalatable, unpleasant things will come out, things you would rather not know. It is grinding, painful labor and I have no magic to change that.”

“I didn’t expect so much honesty.” She hesitated. “Am I allowed to ask questions?”

“Anything.”

“When it’s over … after six months, or whenever … is there a rule that says we can’t see each other again?”

He hesitated. He had been married for three years then, long enough to know that his relationship with Clara wasn’t going to work. “No rule.”

There followed a long silence, during which Anna’s eyes roamed around the cluttered room. “Only I would
like one day to ask you about yourself. Where you live.”

He was startled. She struck him as a quick study, already initiating the games people used to delay him on his
via dolorosa
toward Truth, but more awesomely she had used the phrase “where you live” as if she understood the central place it occupied in his world. For that, ultimately, was all of his work: showing people where they lived, instead of where they imagined they were camping.

He had known in that instant that she was dangerous to him. There were well-established procedures for ridding oneself of patients who might be thought unsuitable. Gerhard ignored the signs.

“Gerhard?”

He came out of his reverie to find Anna in the garden below him with a towel around her shoulders, shivering. It was too early in the season for long baths. He thought about encouraging her to change, then decided not to. A day’s rest had restored most of the natural beauty to her face, and the plain black bikini did wonders for her lightly tanned body, still firm and devoid of stretch marks. Hard to believe she was thirty-nine.

“You seemed miles away,” she said, as she climbed up the path to join him. “What were you thinking?”

“I was remembering something.” He laughed and resumed his seat. “Unimportant.”

She gave herself a few brisk rubs and sat down opposite him, keeping the towel in place for warmth. “Go on, tell me.”

“Oh … there was a time when I used to dream about you. Often.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls. But I’m willing to be flattered, don’t stop.”

“One night I woke up calling your name.”

Gerhard had not meant to reveal himself, but Anna was always quick. “What did the woman with you say?”

He laughed again, although this time with none of his usual assurance.

Anna’s smile was arch. “I bet she was cross. Did you try to seduce all your female patients?”

“I never slept with a patient. Never.” That was true; it would have been perilous in the extreme. “I always waited until after the therapy was over.”

“Ah, I remember. Friends, you said. Once the therapy’s over, a therapist can be friends with his former patient. I loved the way you emphasized ‘former;’ you made me sound cured.” Her face darkened, as if all of a sudden she had lost a battle with cancerous pain. “Was I ever cured?”

“You’re a successful barrister, married, quite rich, I should imagine.”

“Yes, but was I cured?”

He understood. She was testing him. Could he be trusted? No, it was worse than that, she needed to know if there had
ever
been a time when he was worthy of her trust. “What, in your book, is a cure, then?”

“Not being on the run. Not hearing voices in my head. Not doing bad things I can’t remember doing.”

“Such as?”

“Treason. Taking the file.”

He felt a surge of guilty rage. “So it’s back to betrayals, is it?”

“Your theme, not mine.”

“You know perfectly well that at the root of all your problems lay a deep sense of betrayal, first by your mother, then by others. And you felt guilty about what
you regarded as your own betrayals, particularly of Juliet.”

“So you told me.”

“I got rid of the guilt, that’s all. I allowed you to see that having fun wasn’t always so terrible.”

“I’m sure.” She waited, as if expecting him to speak again. When he remained silent she sighed, stood up and walked off the terrace.

Some ten minutes passed without her reappearing, but Gerhard only slowly mastered his anxiety. Today she seemed detached, in reasonable health … and fey. There was something missing. He wanted to analyze it, but his mind kept straying to London.
Would they do a deal? How much was Krysalis worth to them?