Relic of Time (23 page)

From the kitchen he saw the car come into the lot, a new car, probably someone come to make a donation, look around as if in envy at this noble work, and then get the hell out of here. But the big guy who got out of the car and stretched was Traeger. Lowry watched him come to the door, still agile as ever, taking everything in. Traeger came through the door and Lowry came around the hot table, wiping his hands on his apron.

“Sorry, we're all full up.”

“I know what you're full of.”

They shook hands. “How long before you're free?”

“You want to talk? I can't leave here. I'm in charge.”

Traeger looked around. “Here will be fine.”

“You can have some stew. Stew and bread.”

“Did you make it?”

“Of course I made it. I'm the chef.”

After the guests went through the line, Lowry filled bowls for Traeger and himself and they sat at the end of one of the tables.

“Good bread.”

“Day old. Maybe more. We get it for nothing.”

Afterward Traeger helped with the dishes. KP. When the kitchen was spick-and-span, everything put away, and most of the guests had drifted off to the residences, they went into George's office and got comfortable.

“How far would I have to go for a drink?”

“How far can you reach?” He brought out the bottle.

They had several drinks before they got around to Traeger's reason for stopping by.

“I've been hired to do something and I don't know how to do it. I don't even know if it's still to be done.”

Lowry waited. He could see how much that admission cost Traeger.

“That picture that was stolen from the church in Mexico City.”

“There are a million reproductions of it. Turn in one of those.”

“The original is on the back of a cape that is five or six hundred years old.”

“Theophilus Grady didn't have it?”

“That's his story.”

“Don't you believe him?”

Traeger thought about it. “Normally I wouldn't. But if the point was just to raise a little hell, he's done that. So why wouldn't he turn it over?” A pause while he sipped. “I think that maybe he did.”

“Maybe he never had it.”

Traeger sighted at him over the rim of his glass. They were drinking out of jelly jars. “You sound as if you know something.”

“Arroyo.”

Lowry felt the way he had years before when Traeger had debriefed him about his radical days. Traeger considered the answer, filed it away, and they went back to drinking.

“This is pretty bad scotch.”

“Day old. Like our bread.”

There was maybe a drink left in the bottle when they called it a night. Traeger just looked at Lowry when he told him he could give him a bed in the men's residence. Lowry went outside into the parking lot with him. The lights of the rental blinked when Traeger pressed the key.

“You sure you should drive?”

“There's a motel a mile up the road.” He pulled open the car door but before getting in, turned to Lowry.

“Thanks.”

For the scotch? For suggesting he get on to Miguel Arroyo? Maybe both.

It was in the motel up the road that Traeger received the summons to return to Washington.

The letter from Judith was forwarded from Minneapolis, which was something of a surprise since Catherine had asked only that her bills be sent on. When she left for California it had been late in the month, and she hated to have unpaid bills. It wasn't that she realized then how extended her absence would be. There were photographs of Lloyd in the envelope, several memorial cards, and a letter telling Catherine about the very nice author who was planning a book on her father. “It's where and how he died that fascinates him. He finds it symbolic or something. He can explain it to you when he talks with you.”

Catherine threw down the letter angrily. When he talks with me?

“Bad news?” Jason asked, looking up from his desk.

“Not really. A letter from a woman in Indianapolis.”

He shrugged and went back to his book. Well, why should he be interested in a letter from Judith? Why should she? It dawned on her that the only address Judith could have given the author was that of her Minneapolis apartment where she had sent her letter. She picked up the envelope and half slid the photographs of Lloyd from it. She tried to stir up memories of the Whitehall, but all that seemed centuries ago now. The cure she had come for was all but complete.

But Judith's letter haunted her day. The memories of Chicago began to come back, as sweet and sad as ever. It was her parting from Lloyd that was even more vivid than their lovemaking. How tender he had been. And in his eyes she thought she read the promise that those few days together were only a beginning. She could almost believe that he had gone off to the shrine in Mexico City to thank Our Lady of Guadalupe for bringing back his youthful love. That was so much more welcome a thought than that he had fled there out of remorse and shame.

The kind of remorse and shame Catherine was beginning to feel about living with Jason. He was a very demanding person to work for, never commenting on what she did, certainly never thanking her or praising her. Of course he regarded it as an enormous privilege to work with so distinguished a scholar. No doubt that was why he showed so little curiosity about her career. Catherine had never read anthropology before, and if Jason was the best there was, she didn't consider it a very demanding field. All this fuss and bother about the customs of primitive tribes. Of course, that seemed largely an excuse for the hidden allegory beneath it all. We are all primitives. But are we? Catherine considered herself a sophisticated modern woman. She was not mirrored in the stupid eyes of all those bare-breasted females. What do old women have between their breasts that young women don't? A navel. She laughed aloud. How Lloyd had laughed. The joke had drawn from him an admiring comment about her own still firm, full breasts. Her hand rose dreamily, but she brought it to the beads she wore. If she closed her eyes she could feel Lloyd's hand on her breasts, recall his eagerness. Oh, God, those had been lovely days. She told herself that she would even have become a Catholic again for Lloyd if . . . if!

When she went back inside, she sat at the table in Jason's study that she used to work on his papers, but the task had suddenly lost its savor. Across the room, those huge gnarled hands at the sides of his head, Jason sniffled as he read. It was a habit; he didn't have a cold. The sniffling was a kind of punctuation. How annoying it was. An old man reviewing the scholarly work of his lifetime. Would anyone else be as interested in it as he was? She stood.

“I'll make lunch.”

She had to repeat it as she left the study. The old voice called after her, “It's not yet eleven thirty.”

She ignored him. She just had to get out of the study and away from him. What in hell was she doing here? The great skeptic would cure her of the attraction she had felt at Lloyd's funeral, the liturgy measuring out her feelings, giving them direction, a direction she had been sure she had lost? That had been the reason behind her visit. And it had worked, more or less. She had slept with Jason out of gratitude. Now, in the kitchen, the thought of those great gnarled hands moving over her body as he sniffled in appreciation filled her with disgust. But it had seemed part of her cure.

After lunch, he started toward his room. “Time for my nap.” He looked at her with those large, liquid eyes. He was asking her to join him, as she often did.

“I'm going to visit Clare,” she lied.

“Couldn't it wait?”

His eyes were almost pleading. She followed him up the stairs like a wife.

Later, she surprised Clare by asking if she could see the church out back again.

“Of course.”

“It reminds me of him.”

Clare nodded. “George is here.”

“Oh, I'm keeping you from him.”

“He's with my father.”

But when they entered the replica of that great round church in Mexico City, the two men were there, in the front, looking up at the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Don Ibanez turned and beckoned them forward. He took Catherine's hand.

“And how is my atheist neighbor?”

“I'm fine.”

He drew back. “I meant Jason Phelps.”

“He's taking his nap.”

“Wise man.”

What if she had come to visit Don Ibanez rather than Jason and poured out her troubles to him? The two old men were much alike, despite the deep divide between faith and . . . whatever you could call Jason's outlook. When they left the church, Clare and George wandered away.

“You didn't mean that about being an atheist,” Don Ibanez said. He had offered her his arm and they were walking toward the hacienda.

“Didn't I?”

He walked in silence. “That is between God and yourself.”

Inside, he offered her a glass of his favorite red, and they were still sipping it when the young couple came in. Don Ibanez left them and Catherine felt suddenly like the uninvited guest she was. What would any of these three think if they knew she had been in bed with Jason Phelps not an hour earlier? She realized that she was sniffling. From a far room, the sound of a television set became audible. And then there came a great cry from Don Ibanez.

Clare ran to him and George and Catherine followed. No wonder Don Ibanez had cried out. There had been an assassination attempt on Miguel Arroyo.

CHAPTER TWO

When Traeger was called back to Washington, he had a long flight on which to think of what was coming. It seemed best to make his mind a blank. Did retired bankers remember the bad loans they had made, and lawyers their lost cases? His own career seemed more like that of a surgeon who had watched platoons of patients go off to their eternal reward. In his case, most of the deaths had been by violence. For the bulk of his career, working under Dortmund, the long twilight struggle had seemed to make sense. The agency had always been too full of Ivy League types trying to act like their movie counterparts, but there had always been a solid core for whom the stakes were clear; right against wrong, freedom versus slavery. The globe itself had seemed divided between the two sides. And then the Berlin Wall had come down, and the Soviet Union collapsed; it had seemed the victory they had sought. Dortmund had sense enough to retire then. Ever since, the agency had seemed in search of a cause. When he could no longer admire his superiors, Traeger followed Dortmund into retirement. Since then, whenever he had been reactivated, it was in response to Dortmund's wish. And so it had been in the case of the theft of the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the turmoil that followed. Illegal immigration was not of itself enough to stir him, but wondering what others might be concealed among the poor devils sneaking across the border in search of a better deal gave him pause. And the floundering of Homeland Security, of course.

He took a cab from Reagan and soon was in the same room with Boswell, once of the glen plaid suit, now in a blazer and checked open shirt, but the same Wizard of Oz expression.

“Mission accomplished, Traeger.”

“Weren't the instructions to get it?”

“This will please you.”

He handed Traeger a letter from the White House, expressing the president's gratitude.

“I didn't do anything.”

Boswell looked wise. “The main thing is that it was done.”

“We have it?”

“The matter no longer seems urgent.”

Superiors had always spoken with forked tongues, Dortmund excepted, but he, too, had often been enigmatic. It was difficult for an agent not to become duplicitous, an occupational hazard.