Critical Mass (19 page)

Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Critical Mass

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ELIZABETH McGARVEY EMERGED FROM THE BERN DESIGN Polytechnic's Residence Hall Picasso a few minutes after five in the afternoon and unlocked her twelve-speed mountain bike from its rack. The lake air was pleasantly cool and fresh on her bare arms.

At nineteen, Elizabeth was a slender, long-legged young woman with what a former boyfriend had called an “interesting” face of pleasant angles, high cheekbones, a delicately formed nose, a full, almost pouty lower lip and large, brilliantly green eyes that looked at the world with keen intelligence and a hint of amusement. She had her mother's beauty, and her father's spirit. A devastating combination of which she was inwardly proud.

In high school in the States she had done poorly, partly because she was bored, and partly because she'd come from a broken home. When her father had showed up last year, and her mother had not rejected him out of hand, she had blossomed. Life had become important. There was so much to be learned in the world; so much to be grasped, so much to see and do and be, that at times she could barely control her enthusiasms.

She was learning design, everything from fine arts to ergonomics, here outside of Bern near Lac de NeuchÃ¢tel, and loving every second of it.

“Going into town again?” someone asked behind her.

She turned around as Armand Armonde, one of her fine arts instructors, came up. He'd had a thing for her since January when she'd started in his oil and acrylics class.

“Get your bicycle and join me,” she said. “It's barely five klicks.”

“I'd prefer to drive,
ma cherie
. May I give you a lift?”

“I need the exercise. But you can buy me a cognac at the Hansa Haus.”

Armonde was a devastatingly good-looking Parisian, who at thirty still hadn't lost his boyish charm. “And then what?” he asked, pleasantly.

Elizabeth grinned. “I go to the boutique to buy a pair of nylons, then get back on my bicycle and return here. I have a ton of homework, remember?”

“Better yet, we could have dinner together, and afterward return to my studio where I would help you with your work.”

“My daddy taught me never to mix pleasure with business, especially if your business is important to you. My studies are.”

“A wise man.”

“The wisest,” she said. All her life she'd made up quotes which she attributed to her father whenever she figured the situation warranted it. After so many years she'd come to believe them.

“But then you cannot continue your studies, as you have been, twelve months of the year. Sooner or later you will take a holiday and I will be there.”

“I might take you up on it,” Elizabeth said. “In the meantime, a simple cognac?”

Armonde nodded. “Of course.”

“See you in town then,” she said, mounting her bike, and she took off down the hill, her long hair streaming behind her in the wind.

Past the tall iron gates guarding the school property, the narrow driveway ran down to a macadam country lane into the small town of Estavayer-le-lac. Now, in the summer, the town was busy with tourists, but in the winter the entire countryside became almost monastic. The changes in season and population suited Elizabeth. In the past few years she'd lived with her mother's constant striving for recognition, which in Washington meant a steady stream of cocktail
parties and dinners, with hardly a normal evening. If her mother was home, the house was filled with guests. If the house was quiet, her mother was gone.

Elizabeth craved normalcy, craved routine. And, she supposed, she craved acceptance. Most of all by her father.

The route into town was mostly downhill, though the grade wasn't very steep so that the ride back wasn't difficult. She often made the short trip in the afternoons after classes, and sometimes on weekends if the weather was nice, to see the town and the lake, but mostly for the solitude. This time alone gave her a chance to think about herself, about her future, and about her mother and father. Even if they did get together again, she was starting to believe that it would never stick.

Her mother had been reasonably open and honest about the relationship she'd had with her husband; her fears and her complaints, and his frequent absences, and apparent indifference. And although he said he was coming back from Europe, and her mother said that she would forgo the social scene, Elizabeth didn't think that either of them could change their lives so radically.

Which left her a little sad, though she was determined that if her childhood relationship with her father was lost forever, she would make every effort to make sure she had an adult relationship with him.

So far as she could figure, her mother had been, and continued to be, too weak a person to be married to such a man as Kirk McGarvey. Elizabeth decided that she would be different. She did not want a stranger for a father.

Closer into town traffic increased and Elizabeth rode all the way to the right, nearly off the road, so that cars and trucks would have an easier time getting past her.

About a mile out, she glanced over her shoulder. A dark Mercedes sedan was hanging back just a few yards behind her, the driver and another man staring intently at her.

She slowed down and waved them on, but after a few seconds when they didn't pass she looked back again. They
had slowed down, and it appeared as if they had no intention of passing her.

“Idiots,” she mumbled, pulling off the paved surface and stopping. She half dismounted and looked back. The Mercedes stopped ten yards behind her.

For a moment she didn't know what to make of it, but then Armonde's gray Fiat appeared at the crest of the hill, followed by another car and a delivery van.

The passenger in the Mercedes started to get out when the driver looked in the rearview mirror and apparently said something, because the passenger looked back up the highway.

He immediately got back in the car, and the Mercedes pulled away, spitting gravel from its rear tires as it accelerated.

As it passed Elizabeth, the passenger looked out his window, a grim, almost hateful expression on his broad, pale-complected face. The look had been so intense it made her shudder, and she watched as the car disappeared around a bend in the road.

The plates were French, a big oval F decal on the trunk lid.

Armonde beeped and waved as he passed, and when the car and van behind him had also passed, she got back on her bike and continued into town, the brief incident more puzzling to her than troubling.

“WHAT WAS THAT ALL ABOUT ON THE ROAD?” ARMONDE asked when he and Elizabeth were settled at the Hansa Haus.

“With the Mercedes?” she asked. “I don't know. Some crazy tourists who liked my behind, probably. They were French.” She idly fingered the half-carat diamond necklace her father had given her last year.

Armonde smiled. He had the Gallic reserve and was amused by Elizabeth's directness. “And a wonderful
derriÃ¨re
it is. But I thought it was someone you knew.”

“No,” Elizabeth said, preoccupied for the moment with her thoughts. Whoever it was in the car had definitely wanted to make contact with her for some reason. But what had been most puzzling about the incident was the expression on the man's face as the car passed her.

The small gasthaus had filled up with the usual after-work crowd as well as a few tourists, and the room had become smoke-filled and noisy. Suddenly Elizabeth no longer wanted to be there. She wanted peace and solitude. She wanted to return to the school.

She drank her cognac straight back, and waited for a bemused Armonde to finish his.

“Another?” he asked.

“No, but I'd like you to drive me back to the school.”

“Now?”

“Yes,” she said. “We can tie my bike on the roof of your car. If you don't mind.”

“No, of course not. But what about your nylons?”

She glanced toward the door. She was starting to feel
claustrophobic. The last time that had happened to her was when she was little, in Washington, and there'd been a clothes dryer fire in the laundry room. Everyone said she'd probably smelled the smoke, but she'd known differently. She'd
sensed
danger. Like ESP, she'd tried to explain, but no one would listen.

“I don't need them,” she said, getting up.

“Is something wrong, Elizabeth?” Armonde asked, rising.

“No. I just want to go. Now.”

“As you wish,” he said. He laid some money for their drinks on the table and, outside, helped Elizabeth heft her bike up on top of the small car. He got some twine from the trunk and tied the bike in place.

“Is it about that car?” Armonde asked as they headed through town, the big lake at their back.

Elizabeth looked at him, not understanding for a moment what he was asking her. She'd been thinking about Washington and her mother, and especially about her father. She knew, in a vague sense, what he did for a living. It involved the CIA . But she'd never been told the whole story. For some reason her lack of knowledge bothered her just now.

“The Mercedes?” Armonde prompted, and Elizabeth shook herself out of her thoughts.

“No,” she said. “The smoke and the noise just got to me, that's all. It gave me a terrible headache.”

“Standard American,” Armonde said ruefully.

“What?”

“The standard American feminine excuse.”

She smiled and touched his arm. “No, honestly, I do have a terrible headache, but it doesn't have a thing to do with you.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “Really. Even if I didn't have a headache, I wouldn't have dinner with you tonight.”

Kathleen McGarvey's plane from London's Gatwick touched down at Bern's small airport just after 6:30 P.M., and she got lucky with the last rental car from the small Hertz office. A
helpful clerk showed her on a map how to get down to the Design Polytechnic, which was about twenty-five miles to the southwest. She was on the highway by seven.

Kirk's great desire had been for them to live in Europe. But from the start it had been an idea she'd resisted, though exactly why she'd never really been able to answer. Coming here to see her daughter gave her a strange intimation of what their life together could have been like.

Neat. Driving through the outskirts of Bern, and then southwest on the highway, the word kept coming up in her mind. The towns she passed through, and the countryside in between, seemed to be freshly swept. Scrubbed. Groomed. The entire country, or what she was seeing of it, seemed to be a cross between Disneyland and a carefully tended park. Clean. Almost, but not quite, sterile.

For five years Kirk lived in Lausanne, not too far to the south. On the way across the Atlantic this morning aboard the BOAC Concorde SST, she had toyed with the idea of taking Elizabeth with her to visit the city. But it was a foolish notion. That life, the missed opportunities, was dead and gone. There was no use in dredging it up. She wanted only to pick up her daughter, explain the situation to her as best she could and then take her back to Washington to relative safety.

There was little doubt in her mind that the general had ordered someone to watch her. But she had not been interfered with so far. Which either meant she'd been too fast for them, or that their orders were to watch but not touch. In any event she wanted to be back in Washington by tomorrow afternoon where she could be certain they were keeping an eye on her and Elizabeth. As soon as Kirk surfaced again and gave them the all clear, Elizabeth could return to school.

She passed through the small town of Avenches a little before eight, and a few miles farther took the Estavayer-le-lac road. Just past the even smaller village of Payerne, a driveway was marked with a sign for the school and she turned off the paved highway, a little thrill of anticipation fluttering in her stomach. It had been months since she'd last seen Elizabeth, and she wanted to hear all the news.

Elizabeth stood at the window of her dormitory room watching the early evening. There'd been no traffic except for the blue Ford Taurus that had come up the driveway about ten minutes ago. It had been too far away to see who'd been driving, but there were visitors every day.

“Instead of moping around here, why didn't you have dinner with him?” her roommate, Toni Killmer, asked from the open door to the bathroom. She'd been washing nylons and panties.

“I didn't want to spend the evening fighting him off,” Elizabeth said, turning around.

Toni's parents were wealthy New Yorkers. Like Elizabeth she was studying design, but unlike Elizabeth she was here because she'd been kicked out of three other schools, and no one else would have her. She and Elizabeth had become fast friends.

“Why fight? The man is an absolute hunk.”

Elizabeth laughed. “Do you want him?”

“Fuckin' A.”

Elizabeth had to laugh again. “Toni, you are definitely crude.”

“Not crude, sweety, just h-o-r-n-y,” Toni said, and someone knocked on the door. “Him?” she mouthed the word.
“Entrez,”
she called.

Kathleen came in, her linen traveling suit lightly crumpled, but her makeup and hair perfect. “I've had a terrible time finding you.”

“My God, mother. What are you doing here?”

Kathleen smiled tightly and glanced at Toni, who stood in her bra and panties at the bathroom door. “I've popped over to take you to dinner. You haven't eaten yet, have you, dear?”

“No. But I mean, is something wrong?”

“Of course not. Can't a mother come visit her daughter at school?”

“Yes, but â¦”

“Get dressed now, Elizabeth, and we'll find a place to eat.
I think I passed a nice-looking restaurant a few miles back.”

Elizabeth tried to read something from the expression in her mother's eyes, and from her voice. Something was wrong, she was reasonably sure of that. But to what extent there was trouble, it was almost impossible to tell.

“Mother, I'd like you to meet my roommate, Toni Killmer.”

“Mrs. McGarvey,” Toni said pleasantly.

“Of the New York Killmers?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“I know your mother. Lovely lady.” Kathleen turned back to her daughter. “Well, get dressed, dear.”

“May I invite Toni along?” Elizabeth asked.

Kathleen's expression became apologetic. “No, I'm sorry, dear, but I have something â¦ well, something private to discuss with you. You understand.”

“Yes, mother,” Elizabeth replied, and she
did
understand. Something was definitely wrong.