Krysalis: Krysalis (18 page)

How long before Barzel came?

He was startled out of these dark speculations by the discovery that she had again come to stand in front of him. She was fully clothed. Her suitcase sat on the terrace beside her.

“Gerhard, I’m going home.”

No, no,
no!

The sky seemed to darken. The sun disappeared. But there were no clouds. He waited until he could again be sure of his voice, then—“I think that’s a very silly thing to say,” he said smoothly, coming out of his chair.

“This isn’t right. The sooner I go back and face whatever’s coming to me, the better.”

Don’t panic, don’t worry, just think, yes, that’s right, control
… “I really don’t believe you’re in a fit physical or mental state to—”

“Please, let’s not argue. I appreciate what you’ve done, but I can face things by myself.”

He swallowed. There was an impediment in his
throat that refused to go away. “What’s brought this on?”

But he knew. His grip on her had weakened. God knows, the signs had been obvious enough. He’d programed Anna to open the safe, bring him the file, wait while he copied it, take it back, then forget everything. But she could remember a lot of what had happened. She recalled hearing “voices.” One voice in particular. And now this …

He had to bring her back under control.
But how?

“David is going to be very surprised if you just turn up, after arranging for him to come out at the weekend.”

“He’s missing me, Gerhard, he’s worried sick about me. Can’t you see that?”

Despite her words, Kleist detected a hint of irresolution when he’d mentioned David. “He’s already been through rather a lot on your account.”

She said nothing.

“I don’t think he’s quite prepared for your arrest at Heathrow. The photographers. The TV cameras and so on. It will all come as rather a shock to him.”

“Maybe that won’t happen. Perhaps they’ll hush it up. I just know that he needs me and I love him and that what I’m doing is right. I have to go.”

He studied her face. Her eyes were never still. Sometimes they lighted on him, but for the most part they seemed hardly to focus at all.

“Anna. Are you sure?”

“Sure.”

He examined her a moment longer while he sorted through the alternatives, which turned out to be few. “Very well,” he said slowly.

These words seemed to take her by surprise. “You’ll let me go?”

He laughed. “Why, do you think you’re some kind of prisoner, or something?”

Now a longer pause. “I know I’ve got no right to ask you this, but … will you come with me?”

“All right. I didn’t bring a suitcase so I’ve nothing to pack. Do you mind walking to the village? It isn’t very far, and I’ll have to persuade Yorgos to drive us down to the port.”

“I’d love a walk.”

“Good. There’s only one ferry a day, it doesn’t leave until five, but if we go early at least you’ll be able to say you saw the sights of one Greek harbor. Now if you’ll excuse me …”

Gerhard went to his room, shut the door behind him and leaned against it with his eyes closed. So this was how it felt between the devil and the deep blue sea; at last he knew.

He swayed slightly, not quite in command of himself. Anna was preparing, all unwittingly, to put him in danger of death. To exterminate him. His breathing quickened, his stomach felt queasy.
Death.
That, suddenly, had become the reality.
You’re going to die …

Pull yourself together! Everyone’s going to die one day. But not you,
not yet!

He opened his eyes again and strode over to pull the bed away from the wall. The Luger lay in its usual place. He checked the magazine, then stood up, kneeing the bed back into place. He was shaking; his hand had become so weak it could scarcely hold the gun. He had never yet resorted to violence. Physical brutality sickened him. But he’d implanted the idea that Anna
should stay on the island, and that wasn’t working, so he had no choice.

If London played, he would win a fortune and a one-way ticket out of a life that had become impossible, thanks to Anna.

If London played, HVA would want revenge, but they’d never find him in Peru or Paraguay, both places where Gerhard had friends and where life, for the rich, was congenial.

If London played, his sister Ilsa would be destroyed
… don’t think about that!

If, on the other hand, London did not want to buy back Krysalis, he would contact Barzel, “admit” to having panicked, and simply allow the machine to take over, wafting him to safety in Berlin, together with Anna and the file. But everything depended on Anna’s not surfacing. Once she began to talk, he was finished.

He gazed at the gun, trying to imagine how it would feel to point it at Anna, pull the trigger, see her stagger backwards, wet scarlet splashing on the walls, the floor.
… no, no, no.
He couldn’t. Couldn’t even
contemplate
it.

Why?

He laughed aloud, a scornful sound. Why …? Because after that first session of treatment, he and Anna had become lovers, his first adultery. He had never quite stopped loving her, even when HVA ordered him to end the affair because it was a threat to security and anyhow they wanted her to fall in love with David.

Gerhard sank down on the bed, tossed the gun aside. Face it, he told himself, you still love her. Krysalis can buy a new life for
both
of you. You’ll persuade her to come away with you. Given time, she’ll love you again. It’s inevitable. By selling Krysalis, you’ll compromise
her. In London, they’ll never believe she’s innocent after that. She’ll
have
to come with you. All you need is time to prepare her.
Time!

He put on a jacket, picked up the Luger, and dropped it into his pocket. There was one chance left. When earlier he’d mentioned David’s agony at her disgrace, her face had changed. Give her a few more moments …

Anna had begun to wander around, wishing she could explore this beautiful island, and the house in its perfect setting. The insidious thought made her angry, because a moment ago she had known only a fierce desire to go home.

Her headache was back with a vengeance; she felt nauseated. The attack had come on at about the time she’d made up her mind to leave. Don’t fuss, she told herself. Find something to do.

Beside the fireplace stood a bookshelf. She leafed through the few quartos of sheet music lying on top, then her attention was snared by something on the next shelf down. It contained a dozen paperbacks. One of them looked unaccountably familiar. She picked it up and to her surprise realized that it belonged to her.

The first grown-up novel Anna could remember having read was O’Hara’s
From the Terrace.
To that day she could close her eyes and visualize one scene, just one, and it came at the end of the book when Alfred Eaton, the principal character, had been very ill. While he convalesced he would sit in the California sun on the terrace of the title, and look back over a life that had promised at every turn to be successful, yet never quite delivered. And he did not know why.

Anna had once lent this book to Gerhard, who forgot
to return it. And here it was, a little the worse for suntan oil and salt water, but still intact.

Gerhard showed no signs of emerging from his bedroom. Anna carried the book out to the terrace, her own terrace, and sat down facing the sea. The sun made the water look like freshly applied sapphire-blue paint, glossy and fierce. She closed her eyes, trying, like Alfred Eaton, to pinpoint the moment when she had known the promises would never be fulfilled.

Yes. That dinner party. Barristers. All talking law. Poor David.

Robyn, her best friend, had just gone back to the States, leaving her angry and desolate. Everyone at the table was talking, talking, talking, laughing, laughing, laughing, drinking, drinking, drinking, talking, drinking, laughing, and nobody in the room (apart from David) loved Anna at all.

The food was rotten.

She’d been busy, it wasn’t her fault. She couldn’t be everywhere at once. Only because she was a woman, that’s exactly what she had to be: omnipresent, able to cope with everyone and everything. But her cook for the evening, recommended by a friend, turned out to be a disaster. The duck was dry and the mousse separated. Fortunately, David had chosen some marvelous wines, so while the others forced themselves to eat, she’d planted both elbows on the table and held a glass close to her face, concealing the tears.

They were so sleek, so self-satisfied, all these guests. They talked easily and well, scarcely even aware of their power to enthrall. She had devoted a lifetime of mind-bending hard work to the task of joining their ranks, but as she looked along the lines of Hogarthian features, the sharp, pointed noses, fat bellies, pudgy
hands, greasy foreheads, now she realized that they were parasites and she indeed was one of them. How David must have hated it all.

How she hated it, she suddenly realized.

Next day they had dropped by her room at work to thank her for the evening, which almost to a man they characterized as “wonderful.” So mundane an adjective, she thought. Only Guy Samuelson, one of her roommates, smiled the rather secret smile that was his specialty, as if to say, “Yes, the food
did
taste ghastly, didn’t it?” And to him she felt she perhaps ought to apologize (her specialty?), but instead she heard herself say aggressively, “You should be bloody grateful for a meal your wife didn’t have to cook and wash up for a change,” enjoying the way Guy’s smile slipped, as if he’d unexpectedly found himself dealing with someone quite
outrée.

But she was going to need them when she got back. These were the people who would help her fight the massive negligence claim she so dreaded. They would defend her at the Old Bailey against a charge of treason.

One more day without them wouldn’t make a scrap of difference.

Think of David.

And prison … think of that.

“Are you ready?”

Gerhard’s voice brought her back to reality. She stood up, mechanically stuffing the book into her handbag.

“Yes.”

He picked up her case and held the front door open for her. When she did not pass through it at once, he went ahead, striding down the white, dusty path, almost
as if glad that he would shortly be rid of this tiresome houseguest.

“Anna?”

Gerhard reached the gate. He laid a hand on the signboard, the one in the photograph of Robyn that Anna loathed so much, and turned. From the doorway she watched him, so tall and powerful and fine, so untypical of everything left behind in England.

Of everything waiting to devour her.

Suddenly she heard herself say, “I think I would like to stay a bit longer. Perhaps a day or two.”

Gerhard fumbled over closing the gate; the latch seemed to be giving him trouble. When he started to walk back to the house, Anna noticed that his face was pale and running with sweat. She could not think why.

CHAPTER
14

As David walked through the Temple on his way to Anna’s chambers the last of the sun provoked angry amber glints in numerous windows. They made him feel as though he were being watched; but then of course he was. Albert had known about his appointment with Broadway this Tuesday evening. How? There could be only one answer. They were tapping his phone. The knowledge made him angry. He also felt a little sick.

Never mind Albert, he told himself sourly. You’ve got a long list of questions to ask; concentrate on them.

Anna worked in a four-story Georgian building, strangely isolated from the other eighteenth-and nineteenth-century sets of chambers at this hub of London’s legal universe. Yet the accouterments of a more modern age were not lacking. The first thing to meet his eyes as he entered the clerks’ room was a fax machine humming away. There was a photocopier, one of the larger models that could collate as well as reproduce, a
Telex terminal, a laser printer. If the hull was Dickensian, the engine room was twenty-first century.

David approached the clerk’s desk. “Good evening, Roger.”

“Hello, Mr. Lescombe.” The young man called Roger deftly cleared his screen of outstanding fees and stood up.

“I’ve come to see Mr. Broadway.”

“He’s in con. Shouldn’t be long.”

The phrase “in con” was short for “in conference,” or, more accessibly, “in a meeting.” It usually reminded David of “in labor,” and made him want to laugh, although not today.

“I’ll wait. Is my wife’s room empty?”

“Should be.”

Anna’s office overlooked Temple embankment. It was cramped, part of what had once been one enormous room, now partitioned. She had to share it with two others, who tonight, mercifully, were absent.

Three reproduction desks, all the worse for wear, took up most of the space. Beneath the window was a table, covered with briefs wrapped in pink tape, some of them thick, some thin, some consisting of half a dozen box files with miscellaneous papers bundled on top. Nothing brief about them. The whole of one longer wall was taken up with bookcases filled with Law Reports. On the mantelpiece opposite stood a clock, next to it was the bottom half of a green wine bottle cram full of dried-out ballpoint pens and pencil stubs.