Krysalis: Krysalis (37 page)

He spoke the last word with a mixture of resentment and admiration.

“Before you and I met, HVA came to me one day. One of my patients was a secretary in the cabinet office. She was terrified of her employers’ finding out she was in therapy. HVA told me to go to work on her, play on her fears.” He laughed, a hateful sound. “Make her fall in love with you, why don’t you?—that’s what they said.”

“And you said yes.”

“I said no.”

“But—”

“I was … encouraged to think again. If I wanted Ilsa and her family to go on working. Eating. Walking about the streets. Don’t you see the irony, Anna? If I bought this deal, I’d be prostituting everything I’d trained for.
Whereas if I refused, the only effect would be to destroy my sister’s career, and she’s no prostitute.”

“What happened?” Anna asked coldly.

“This wretched girl, this secretary, told me a few odds and ends that I passed on. Enough to satisfy HVA.”

“And when I married David, they came to you again.”

“In a way …”

She looked at him expectantly. His face told her that whatever came next she would find difficult.

“Anna, I have to tell you this. They … they knew about David before you did. HVA asked me to find a way of introducing the two of you. And I did.”

It mattered to him more than to her, she realized. “The sailing weekend?”

“Yes.”

“It worked.” She sighed. She knew he felt bad about it, presumably because that had spelled the end of his hopes of one day divorcing Clara and marrying Anna, but she couldn’t share his regrets. By bringing her and David together, Gerhard had done her the biggest favor in his life.

“So HVA wanted to get at David, through me,” she said. “Is that it?”

“Yes.”

A long pause followed. “And you agreed,” she said at last. “Even though we’d been lovers, friends …”

Gerhard was eager to justify himself. “You see, Ilsa and I, we … we had a sort of conspiracy. Against my father. Even before I opened my first textbook I knew how wrong he was to blame Ilsa for our mother’s death. It made us even closer, somehow. Once she was married, had children, she became even more vulnerable.
Anna, can’t you find it in yourself to understand how I felt?”

“What do you want?” She was genuinely curious. “Sympathy? Forgiveness?” She could have told him, you get used to the guilt, after a while. After a lifetime. But somehow that would have sounded cheap, and would have brought her down to his level. So instead, “I understand,” was all she said.

His expression told her that he found this hard to accept, but Anna found it equally difficult to elaborate. She imagined the HVA holding Juliet, or David. “Behave or else,” that’s what they would say, and she would behave, oh yes….

Gerhard started to apologize, but she cut him off. “Is there anything else?”

For a long time he continued to gaze down at the floor as if the secrets of his motivation lay concealed beneath the flagstones. Anna sensed he was casting about for an explanation of why he had, after all, decided to sacrifice Ilsa, why in the end she had proved as expendable as anyone else. Anna knew the answer: when it came down to a straight choice between Gerhard and Ilsa, it had seemed the right thing to do at the time. Now …

“They are sending a submarine to take us off the island,” he said at last. “That’s what I came here to tell you. A Russian submarine.”

She fixed him with one of her level stares, the kind she knew he most abhorred because she could use it to veil herself from him. “Of course.”

“Why do you say ‘of course’?”

“They’ll want to interrogate me, won’t they? See what else I know about David’s work. You’d better
hypnotize me again, remove whatever it was you put in my head to stop me from leaving.”

“You knew about that?”

“Oh, I’ve worked out a lot of things. When does this happen?”

He did not answer immediately. Anna felt like a condemned prisoner who hears that her appeal for clemency has been rejected, that it remains only to pencil a date in the diary.
“When?”

“Monday.”

“But that’s the day after tomorrow!”

“Anna, what you said was right, I did implant a suggestion that you shouldn’t try to leave here. So now we really must try to prepare you for the journey, sort you out.”

“Get lost.”

“Unless you make an effort—”

“You’ll
what?
Go on, tell me, you bastard! Twist me and bend me and make suggestions in the hope I’ll believe I thought of them first … come on, you can do it! After all, you made me into a
traitor!”

She raised her hands to her eyes, wanting more than anything to sleep, perhaps faint; it didn’t matter what form oblivion took as long as it came. But then she remembered: if she did not save herself, nobody else could.

She had one solid, useful piece of information: she knew how he had broken her. She understood his methods. If only she could find a way of turning them against him, discover the weakness that
must
be there….

“Gerhard,” she said, wiping her eyes.

“Yes?”

“I’m all right now.” She lowered herself down beside
him, in such a way that he could not easily see her face.

“I’m glad.”

“But there’s something else I’d like to ask you.”

“What is it?”

“When they’ve finished with me in Berlin, or wherever it is, assuming I cooperate …”

He became unexpectedly animated. “Yes, I wanted to talk to you about that. When it’s over—”

“Can I go home then? To David?”

Gerhard’s gaze dropped. He said nothing.

“That’s the one success you did have. He’s all I ever prayed for, dreamed of, and I love him.” She looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. “I love him,” she repeated, “and he must be feeling desolate beyond belief.”

“He’s a sensible man.” Gerhard’s voice was indifferent. “He’ll come to terms with it.”

“But he can’t, you see. Don’t you realize what he must be
feeling?
He thinks that I’ve abandoned him, that I don’t love him.” She paused, seeking some way to reach Gerhard. “Another death without a corpse. You remember, we were talking yesterday, the worst thing in the world?”

When he remained silent she raised her head and looked at him beseechingly. “If you promise me I can go back to David, I’ll do anything you want. I won’t try to escape.”

He was almost convinced. “You promise?”

“Yes.”
Now she was on the brink. Suppose he put her under, then tried to make love to her, no, don’t think that….
“You can hypnotize me, if you like.”
It was done!
“If that will make you feel more … more secure. Only please don’t use the drugs again, they’re so dreadful. Just put me into a trance. Relax me.” Anna
breathed in deeply, closing her eyes. “Do it now,” she said in a rush.

“Here?”

“Yes. It’s peaceful here.”

“Anna, listen to me.” He took her hands between his own. A spasm of treacherous delight ran down her spine; with an effort she repressed a gasp. “There was a time when we had something, wasn’t there? Something … perfect.”

She stared at him.

“If you came to Berlin and … and they decided they couldn’t afford to let you go …”

She snatched her hands away, but he caught them again and held them fast. “If that’s what happened … could you … bring yourself to forget the past, forget David—?”

She jumped to her feet, where he could no longer use that insidious touch to play upon her innermost vulnerability.
You fool,
she cried to herself.
How could you fail to realize …?

“Anna, please say you’ll consider it.” He was imploring her now. “Please!”

“No!” she cried, running to the door. “I love David.” The words acted on her like a magic charm, she felt an upsurge of energy as she seemed to grow in stature, and it was true! “I love David,” she shouted again, this time with triumph in her voice.

“And what if something were to happen to him?” he said harshly. “What then?”

She wheeled around to stare at him. “What could happen to—”

“Who do you think these people are, these HVA men we’ve been talking about so gaily? Kindergarten nurses? Eh?”

Her exultation drained away, she became frightened. “Tell me,” she whimpered. “I know you’re hiding something.
Tell me!”

He was on his feet now, his face twisted into an expression of hatred. “He’s going to New York. They’ll—”

“How can you know where he’s—”

“Unless he backs off soon, they’ll stop him.” He strode forward, catching her unawares, and grabbed her arm. “Anna, don’t you understand?
They’re going to kill your husband!”

CHAPTER
29

It was night, the streets of New York were jammed with cars and pedestrians. David made his initial pass quickly, first examining the facade of Robyn’s apartment building from the opposite side of Park Avenue, then walking by close enough to get a good look at the doorman, wearing his peaked hat, with a pair of white gloves tucked into the left epaulette of his overcoat. David turned off the avenue and ducked into the first bar he found. He ordered a scotch, straight up, found the last empty table, and wrote a note. Then he went straight back onto Park, walking fast, and accosted the doorman, who had just escorted a mink-clad lady from her Mercedes to the door.

“For Robyn Melkiovicz,” he said, handing the note to the man. “You might be good enough to inform her that it’s somewhat urgent.” David did not know he had such reserves of true-grit Brit accent to call upon. “And I hope you will have a drink on me later this evening. Good day.” Wrapped around the envelope was a twenty-dollar bill.

David walked away without looking back, turned right at the next intersection, and broke into a jog. He loped all the way around the block, glad to be jostled by passersby, because they afforded him what he most needed: cover.

The FBI would be closing in now. Perhaps they had already intercepted the note. David pushed through the door of the same bar he’d visited earlier and ordered another scotch.

Fifteen minutes, he had written in his note. Such and such a bar in fifteen minutes’ time, don’t phone anyone, don’t tell a neighbor, you’re being watched, your phone is tapped, you may be in great danger. He had signed himself “Anna Lescombe’s husband, David” and he had included the photograph found in Anna’s desk, not knowing if that would work, but praying, praying …

He looked at his watch. The CIA and FBI might be finite organizations, but their capacities were great. He had been on the run now for six hours. People would be looking for him, a lot of people. She was late. She wasn’t coming. She had not received his note, she was out of town. He should have called,
no, you couldn’t call, her phone may be tapped.

From where he was sitting he had a view of the door. Every so often it swung open to admit a wave of cold air from the street into the bar’s overheated fug, and David tensed, sure it would be the police. Feeling another blast, he raised his head in time to see a boisterous trio of men come in. The door swung shut.

He half rose in his seat. A second before the door closed he had caught sight of a figure outside. Female. Hands thrust deep into the pockets of a short jacket,
spoiling its shape. Not walking, not talking to anyone, just standing there.

It was she, he knew it had to be she. Suppose she had called the police, “Officer, there’s a man trying to molest me….” What if she had shown his note to someone? “Go to the bar,” they might have told her. “Persuade him to come outside in the street where we can overpower him….”

What should he do?

A man was sitting at the bar alongside a woman who looked considerably younger than her companion. Now they stood up and bade noisy good-byes to the bartender. They seemed to be in the middle of a good-natured argument.

“Look,” the man was saying. “Look, on Monday, you just … you just
tell
them, right?”

“Oh, you know, you can’t just tell those guys….”

“No. Listen. Wait. You just, you know, you go in, and you say, ‘Look, fellahs …’”

They had reached the door. As the man opened it, David caught another glimpse of the person on the pavement. She hadn’t moved. He stood up, quickly paid for his drink, and maneuvered himself behind the couple who were leaving, did it in such a way that to anyone outside he must look like a member of their party.
Don’t scare her. Do not, whatever happens, scare this woman….

As the three of them went out David peeled away from the couple, who had not noticed his existence, and stopped while still a few feet short of the lone figure.

“Don’t come any closer,” she cried warningly, holding up both hands. “Stay where you are.”

David froze. His world began to fall apart. She’d
tricked him! Now passersby would rescue her, maybe somebody had a gun. To come so close and now this!

“Look, I’m telling you …”

“You know, look, will you please listen …?”

The sound of the departing couple’s discussion died away. David realized that none of the pedestrians on the street had stopped, or so much as looked in his direction. People went right on hurrying by.