The Scarlatti Inheritance (35 page)

“I can do just that.”

Rheinhart rose and faced Heinrich Kroeger.

“If you speak the truth … you will have the support of the imperial German generals.”

Janet Saxon Scarlett, eyes still shut, reached under the sheets for the body of her lover. He was not there, so she opened her eyes and raised her head, and the room spun around. Her lids were heavy and her stomach hurt. She was still exhausted, still a bit drunk.

Matthew Canfield sat at the writing desk in his undershorts. His elbows were on the desk, his chin cupped in his hands. He was staring down at a paper in front of him.

Janet watched him, aware that he was oblivious to her. She rolled onto her side so that she could observe him.

He was not an ordinary man, she thought, but on the other hand neither was he particularly outstanding, except that she loved him. What, she wondered, did she find so attractive about him? He was not like the men from her world—even her recently expanded world. Most of the men she knew were quick, polished, overly groomed and only concerned with appearances. But Matthew Canfield could not fit into this world. His quickness was an intuitive alertness not related to the graces. And in other respects there was a degree of awkwardness; what confidence he had was born of considered judgment, not simply born.

Others, too, were far more handsome, although he could be placed in the category of “good-looking” in a rough-hewn way.… That was it, she mused; he gave the appearance both in actions and in looks of secure independence, but his private behavior was different. In private he was extraordinarily gentle, almost weak.…
She wondered if he was weak. She knew he was deeply upset and she suspected that Elizabeth had given him money to do her bidding.… He didn’t really know how to be at ease with money. She’d learned that during their two weeks together in New York. He’d obviously been told to spend without worrying about sums in order to establish their relationship—he’d suggested as much—and they’d both laughed because what they were doing on government funds was, in essence, spelling out the truth.… She would have been happy to pay the freight herself. She’d paid for others, and none were as dear to her as Matthew Canfield. No one would ever be so dear to her. He didn’t belong to her world. He preferred a simpler, less cosmopolitan one, she thought. But Janet Saxon Scarlett knew she would adjust if it meant keeping him.

Perhaps, when it was all over, if it was ever to be all over, they would find a way. There had to be a way for this good, rough, gentle young man who was a better man than any she had ever known before. She loved him very much and she found herself concerned for him. That was remarkable for Janet Saxon Scarlett.

When she had returned the night before at seven o’clock, escorted by Derek’s man Ferguson, she found Canfield alone in Elizabeth’s sitting room. He’d seemed tense, edgy, even angry, and she didn’t know why. He’d made feeble excuses for his temper and finally, without warning, he had ushered her out of the suite and out of the hotel.

They had eaten at a small restaurant in Soho. They both drank heavily, his fear infecting her. Yet he would not tell her what bothered him.

They’d returned to his room with a bottle of whiskey. Alone, in the quiet, they had made love. Janet knew he was a man holding on to some mythical rope, afraid to let go for fear of plunging downward.

As she watched him at the writing desk, she also instinctively knew the truth—the unwanted truth—which she had suspected since that terrible moment more than a day ago when he had said to her, “Janet. I’m afraid we’ve had a visitor.”

That visitor had been her husband.

She raised herself on her elbow. “Matthew?”

“Oh.… Morning, friend.”

“Matthew … are you afraid of him?”

Canfield’s stomach muscles grew taut.

She knew.

But, of course, she knew.

“I don’t think I will be … when I find him.”

“That’s always the way, isn’t it? We’re afraid of someone or something we don’t know or can’t find.” Janet’s eyes began to ache.

“That’s what Elizabeth said.”

She sat up, pulling the blanket over her shoulders, and leaned back against the headrest. She felt cold, and the ache in her eyes intensified. “Did she tell you?”

“Finally.… She didn’t want to. I didn’t give her an alternative.… She had to.”

Janet stared straight ahead, at nothing. “I knew it,” she said quietly. “I’m frightened.”

“Of course you are.… But you don’t have to be. He can’t touch you.”

“Why are you so sure? I don’t think you were so sure last night.” She was not aware of it, but her hands began to shake.

“No, I wasn’t.… But only because he existed at all.… The unholy specter alive and breathing.… No matter how much we expected it, it was a shock. But the sun’s up now.” He reached for his pencil and made a note on the paper.

Suddenly Janet Scarlett flung herself down across the bed. “Oh, God, God, God!” Her head was buried in the pillow.

At first Canfield did not recognize the appeal in her voice, for she did not scream or shout out and his concentration was on his notes. Her muffled cry was one of agony, not desperation.

“Jan,” he began casually. “Janet!” The field accountant threw down his pencil and rushed to the bed. “Janet!… Honey, please don’t. Don’t, please. Janet!” He cradled her in his arms, doing his best to comfort her. And then slowly his attention was drawn to her eyes.

The tears were streaming down her face uncontrollably, yet she did not cry out but only gasped for breath. What disturbed him were her eyes.

Instead of blinking from the flow of tears, they remained wide open, as if she were in a trance. A trance of horror.

He spoke her name over and over again.

“Janet. Janet. Janet. Janet.…”

She did not respond. She seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the fear which controlled her. She began to moan, at first quietly, then louder and louder.

“Janet! Stop it! Stop it! Darling, stop it!”

She did not hear him.

Instead she tried to push him away, to disengage herself from him. Her naked body writhed on the bed; her arms lashed out, striking him.

He tightened his grip, afraid for a moment that he might hurt her.

Suddenly she stopped. She threw her head back and spoke in a choked voice he had not heard before.

“God damn you to hell!… God damn you to hellll!”

She drew out the word “hell” until it became a scream.

Her legs spread slowly, reluctantly, apart on top of the sheet.

In that same choked, guttural voice she whispered, “You pig! Pig! Pig! Pig!”

Canfield watched her in dread. She was assuming a position of sexual intercourse, steeling herself against the terror which had enveloped her and which would progressively worsen.

“Janet, for God’s sake, Jan.… Don’t! Don’t! No one’s going to touch you! Please, darling!”

The girl laughed horridly, hysterically.

“You’re the
card
, Ulster! You’re the God damn jack of … jack of …” She quickly crossed her legs, one emphatically on top of the other, and brought her hands up to cover her breasts. “Leave me alone, Ulster! Please, dear God, Ulster! Leave me alone!… You’re going to leave me alone?” She curled herself up like an infant and began to sob.

Canfield reached down to the foot of the bed and pulled the blanket over Janet.

He was afraid.

That she could Suddenly, without warning, reduce herself to Scarlett’s unwilling whore was frightening.

But it was there, and he had to accept it.

She needed help. Perhaps far more help than he could provide. He gently stroked her hair and lay down beside her.

Her sobs evened off into deep breathing as she closed
her eyes. He hoped she was sleeping but he could not be sure. At any rate, he would let her rest. It would give him the time to figure out a way to tell her everything she had to know.

The next four weeks would be terrible for her.

For the three of them.

But now there was an element which had been absent before, and Canfield was grateful for it. He knew he shouldn’t have been, for it was against every professional instinct he had.

It was hate. His own personal hate.

Ulster Stewart Scarlett was no longer the quarry in an international hunt. He was now the man Matthew Canfield intended to kill.

Ulster Scarlett watched the flushed, angry face of Adolf Hitler. He realized that in spite of his fury, Hitler had a capacity for control that was nothing short of miraculous. But then the man himself was a miracle. A historic man-miracle who would take them into the finest world imaginable on earth.

The three of them—Hess, Goebbels, and Kroeger—had driven through the night from Montbéliard to Munich, where Hitler and Ludendorff awaited a report of their meeting with Rheinhart. If the conference had gone well, Ludendorff’s plan was to be set in motion. Each faction of the Reichstag possessing any serious following would be alerted that a coalition was imminent. Promises would be made, threats implied. As the Reichstag’s sole member of the National Socialist party and its candidate for president the previous year, Ludendorff would be listened to. He was the soldier-thinker. He was slowly regaining the stature he had thrown away in defeat at the Meuse-Argonne.

Simultaneously and in twelve different cities anti-Versailles demonstrations would be staged, where the police had been paid handsomely not to interfere. Hitler was to travel to Oldenburg, in the center of the northwest Prussian territory, where the great military estates were slowly going to seed—massive remembrances of past glories. A huge rally would be mounted and it was planned that Rheinhart himself would make an appearance.

Rheinhart was enough to give credence to the party’s military support. It was more than enough; it would be a
momentary climax fitting their current progress. Rheinhart’s recognition of Hitler would leave no room for doubt as to where the generals were leaning.

Ludendorff looked upon the act as a political necessity. Hitler looked upon it as a political coup. The Austrian lance corporal was never unmoved by the anticipation of Junker approval. He knew that it was his destiny to have it—demand it!—but nonetheless it filled him with pride, which was why he was furious now.

The ugly little Goebbels had just finished telling Ludendorff and Hitler of Rheinhart’s remarks about the Austrian.

In the large rented office overlooking the Sedlingerstrasse, Hitler gripped the arms of his chair and pushed himself up. He stood for a moment glaring at Goebbels, but the thin cripple knew that Hitler’s anger was not directed at him, only at his news.

“Fettes Schwein! Wir werden ihn zu seinen Landsort zurück senden! Lass ihm zu seinen Kühen zurück gehen!”

Scarlett was leaning against the wall next to Hess. As usual when the conversations taking place were in German, the willing Hess turned to Ulster and spoke quietly.

“He’s very upset. Rheinhart may be an obstacle.”

“Why?”

“Goebbels doesn’t believe Rheinhart will openly support the movement. He wants all the advantages without getting his tunic dirty!”

“Rheinhart said he would. In Montbéliard he said he would! What’s Goebbels talking about?” Scarlett found it necessary to watch himself. He really didn’t like Goebbels.

“He’s just told them what Rheinhart said about Hitler. Remember?” Hess whispered with his hand cupped in front of his mouth.

Scarlett raised his voice. “They should tell Rheinhart—no Hitler, no marbles! Let him go shag!”

“Was ist los?” Hitler glowered at Hess and Scarlett. “Was sagt er, Hess?”

“Lass Rheinhart zum Teufel gehen!”

Ludendorff laughed out of the corner of his mouth. “Das ist naiv!”

“Tell Rheinhart to do as we say or he’s out! No troops! No weapons! No uniforms! No one to pay for it all! I don’t pay! No place to train them without the inspection
teams on his back! He’ll listen!” Scarlett ignored Hess, who was rapidly translating everything the former said.

Ludendorff broke in on Hess as he finished interpreting.

“Man kann einen Mann wie Rheinhart nicht drohen. Er ist ein einflussreich Preusse!”

Hess turned to Ulster Scarlett. “Herr Ludendorff says that Rheinhart will not be threatened. He is a Junker.”

“He’s a frightened, overstuffed tin soldier, that’s what he is! He’s running scared. He’s got the Russian shakes! He needs us and he knows it!”

Hess repeated Scarlett’s remarks. Ludendorff snapped his fingers in the Heidelberg fashion, as if mocking a ridiculous statement.

“Don’t laugh at me! I talked with him, not you! It’s my money! Not yours!”

Hess did not need to translate. Ludendorff rose from his chair, as angry as Scarlett.

“Sag dem Amerikaner dass sein Gelt gibt ihm noch lange nicht das Recht uns Befehle zu geben.”

Hess hesitated. “Herr Ludendorff does not believe that your financial contributions … as welcome as they are …”

“You don’t have to finish! Tell him to go shag, too! He’s acting just the way Rheinhart expects!” Scarlett, who had not moved from his position against the wall, pushed himself away and sprang forward effortlessly to his full height.

For a moment the aging, intellectual Ludendorff was physically afraid. He did not trust the motives of this neurotic American. Ludendorff had often suggested to Hitler and the others that this man who called himself Heinrich Kroeger was a dangerous addition to their working circle. But he had been consistently overruled because Kroeger not only possessed what appeared to be unlimited financial resources, but seemed to be able to enlist the support, or at least the interest, of incredibly influential men.

Still, he did not trust him.

Essentially because Ludendorff was convinced that this Kroeger was stupid.

“May I remind you, Herr Kroeger, that I possess a … working knowledge of the English language!”

“Then why don’t you use it?”

“I do not feel it is—how is it said?—entirely necessary.”

“It is now, damn it!”

Adolf Hitler suddenly clapped his hands twice, signifying an order of silence. It was an irksome gesture to Ludendorff, but his respect for Hitler’s talents—which bordered on awe—made him accept such aggravations.