Krysalis: Krysalis (49 page)

Anna’s attention suddenly divided. Barzel, keeping both hands in his pockets, had begun to saunter along
the beach, kicking stones, peering closely at lichens where they sprouted from rocks. He had drawn almost level with Roberts; another few steps would bring him to her side. At the same time, she heard the dark girl say, “Dr. Kleist, I know Rayner Acheson.”

“You do?”

“Mm-hm.” The brunette nodded vigorously, eager, nay desperate, to please. “He lectures us nurses. I want to get into psychology. It’s terribly hard, though.”

“But
so
rewarding.” Gerhard had become animated. He started to draw pictures in the air with his hands, bewitching the girl with his love of the job, his dedication.

“Anna,” she heard a low voice say, and she jumped, for now Barzel was standing close by with his back to her and she had not seen him make his final approach. She waited for him to speak again, but he remained silent. Then she lowered her gaze to see that he had removed both hands from his pockets and was holding them clasped loosely behind his back. To the others, it must have looked a natural enough posture, relaxed, unthreatening. Only she was in a position to see that the right hand held his gun.

Then she dragged her eyes away and noticed, for the first time, how Stange stood to the rear of Gerhard. He, too, had his hands behind his back. It did not require genius to deduce that he also had a gun. Gerhard was risking his life to save her.

But Barzel had left no room for misunderstanding. If she persisted in trying to escape, she would oblige him and Stange to liquidate every trace of these people, perhaps Gerhard as well. On the other hand, she could save them. Her choice.

“Mrs. Lescombe …”

Roberts had to say it twice more before she realized he was talking to her, that everyone was looking expectantly at her.

“Yes.” Her voice was scarcely audible.

“Would you like to come for a sail with us? We’d be only too pleased to give you a spin around the bay, as it were.”

Anna managed to snatch her eyes away from the gun. For a moment she gazed sightlessly into the distance, then she refocused, looking as she did so from face to face, Roberts, amiable, concerned. His girlfriend, Gloria, still lowering, her mouth halfway between a sulky smile and a pout. The other man, Pete … no, she could not look at his face for he was stretched out on the deck of the yacht, catching the early-morning rays, fashionable sunglasses circling his head in a black band. And the brunette, the one person Anna might, just conceivably, have been able to order into extinction if it had been a clear-cut choice, her or me …

And finally, Stange. Smiling an unperturbed smile. Indifferent.

“Mrs. Lescombe. We really would be ever so pleased if you wanted to spend a day with us. Really.” Roberts waited a moment. When still she did not speak, he said again, “Mrs. Lescombe …”

A tear rolled down Anna’s cheek. Rescue had come from nowhere, had dangled tantalizingly before her anguished gaze … and departed. Human beings, mere people, were not designed to cope with such anguish. Such despair.

“I’m sorry,” she heard herself say. “I’m so sorry to have made such a fool of myself. I think I’ll go and lie down. I’m so very, very sorry.”

CHAPTER
39

David’s plane was five minutes late. Albert stood on the terrace, enjoying a breeze that might have come out of a blow heater, and watched the passengers disembark. The third man down the steps raised his hand as he reached the tarmac, evidently greeting someone who was waiting for him, as indeed Albert was. The signal meant our man’s right behind me.

Albert drifted downstairs to take up position behind the glass screen facing the customs hall, working out what to say. David knew where Anna was. Somehow Albert had to extract the information from him. He didn’t kid himself that this would be easy.

He watched David pass Immigration and pause, evidently unsure whether to join the crowd of holiday makers around the baggage carousel or walk straight out.

Then came a hitch.

A pay phone was mounted on the wall behind the nearest Immigration desk. David went across to it,
lifted the handset and dialed. Albert swore. It was almost inconceivable that Vassili would have bugged that line. Who was Lescombe phoning? Did he speak Greek? Yes! He had studied classics at his minor public school, could almost certainly make himself understood. One minute into stress time, and already a gigantic hole was opening up before Albert’s very eyes….

The man who had got off the plane just ahead of David now stood behind him, tossing coins from hand to hand, but David kept his body positioned to conceal what he was doing. He made two calls, one short, one long, staying on the phone for about five minutes altogether. Then he came through customs without waiting for bags. Albert caught the other watcher’s eye. The man mouthed the one word “Greek” and shrugged.

Albert scowled at the memory of the Washington hotel room, with possessions scattered around it and a tape recorder playing in the bathroom. No luggage, an empty pair of hands … expert, oh yes. Who had taught him these tricks?

He caught up with David as he was turning away from the money-changing kiosk with a wad of
drachmas
in his hands. “Hello,” Albert said quietly, and David seemed to shudder.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. No fear, just righteous indignation.

“Waiting for you.”

“Am I going to be arrested?”

“Haven’t you had enough of the police for a while? Incidentally, I admire your grit. Not many men would have boarded a plane so soon after what you went through yesterday. Didn’t it occur to you that they might try again?”

“Since Cornwall I’ve had to learn how to look after myself.”

“Indeed.” Albert smiled faintly. Ingratiation, his chosen method of attack, wasn’t working. “Let’s go and get ourselves a drink.”

David stared at his bandage. “You’ve hurt yourself.”

“An accident. Nothing serious.”

“I see. Look, I’m late. My travel agent’s sending someone to meet me at the harbor. I suppose I can’t stop you from riding with me, if you want.”

“That was a nice trick you pulled in Washington,” Albert said as he settled back in the taxi. “Grosvenor Square had its share of red faces, but your score of brownie points with us increased dramatically.”

“Is that why you’ve been letting me run?”

“Why shouldn’t you be free to go anywhere you want?”

“Then tell me the reason you’re here. Two weeks’ holiday in the sun? Or is the regiment practicing beach landings?”

“I’ve come for one specific purpose: to talk to you about your wife.” Albert unfastened his briefcase. “These papers are a transcript of notes maintained on Anna by a man called Gerhard Kleist … you’ve heard of him.”

He had been intending to frame it as a question, but David’s facial reaction to the name rendered that unnecessary.

“Kleist has been treating your wife, on and off, for almost sixteen years now, first for postnatal depression, then, at intervals, for other depressions usually triggered by crises at work. After the first treatment, the two of them became …”

“Lovers.”

Albert nodded. “It’s clear from the notes, however, that it didn’t last.”

“Three years! You call that not lasting?”

“They stayed friends. On and off. Until the final break.”

“What
break?”

“After Robyn Melkiovicz went back to the States, in 1987. There’s no record of Anna and Kleist having been together after that. You must
study
these notes. They may help you to help us find out where your wife is.”

“Don’t you know?”

“I wouldn’t be talking to you if I did.”

There was a long pause. “Let me see those notes.”

Albert handed them over and sat back to enjoy the scenery. They were descending a street of attractively color-washed houses, with balconies, and plants in huge amphora, and an occasional garden where yellow grass bunched thickly. A wonderful place. His hand was feeling better already….

“How did you get hold of these? Make them up, did you?”

Albert regretfully turned away from the street to see that David’s face had become white and drawn. Softly, he warned himself, don’t get angry, don’t lose your head….

“Judging by these notes, Anna’s insane,” David said. “Good God, how in hell could she have been a barrister all those years with this … this muck churning about inside her?”

“We haven’t had time to take professional advice about that, but she’s emphatically not insane. Not yet, anyway.”

“What does that mean, not yet?”

“One theory current in London, on the basis of what I’ve shown you, is that Anna has been skillfully manipulated by a rogue therapist. He’s been molding her, if you like.”

“I’ve never heard anything so crazy in all my life.”

“It’s not crazy, David, it’s simple fact. The techniques for treating depression are well known. The notes show that he applied them to Anna, but halfheartedly, not following through.”

“Why should he do such a thing?”

“Because each time she left him, ‘cured’ as it were, he planted a hook to draw her back with later. Perhaps he wanted to get their affair back on the rails, maybe he was acting under orders from East Berlin, we just don’t know. But he abused Anna, professionally; his own notes prove that much.” Albert paused. Thus far, he had stuck more or less to the truth. The time had come for him to improvise a little.

“She’s in great danger from this man,” he said. “It’s possible that when she fled she was suffering from something called a ‘fugue.’”

“A what?”

“It’s a state of personality dissociation characterized by amnesia and actual physical flight.”

“But why on earth should—”

“Because she is very disturbed.” Albert spoke quietly, willing David to believe. “She’s in danger of doing something irreparable or, more probably, being
made
to do something irreparable.”

“She’ll go … disappear?”

“Yes.”

The taxi drew up on the quay beside a sign that said
PARGA, IGOUMINI
TSA, followed by an arrow. As they got out, the sea flashed white fire into Albert’s eyes. He
breathed deeply, relishing the feel of heat on his skin.

The sign apparently held some deep source of fascination for David. “I’ll have that drink after all,” he said slowly, but without taking his eyes off the sign.

“Good.” Albert looked around the chock-a-block scene and his expression was wry. “Two things this place isn’t short of are people and places to drink. Over there, look, we can sit outside….”

They ordered beer. While they waited, David turned the pages of notes faster and faster until Albert knew he was not really reading, he was hunting for the end in the faint hope it might be a happy one.

“Cheers,” said Albert.

David took a handkerchief from his pocket and used it to wipe his face. Beads of sweat broke out again at once. “She’s a split personality,” he said hoarsely.

“No. She is not. Multiple personality, which is what you are thinking of, is a class of psychoneurosis. Specifically:
grande hystérie.
Anna couldn’t have operated under those circumstances, and we know she led an outwardly normal life all the time she was under Kleist’s care.”

“Then how—”

“I want you to understand something. It’s important. Your wife is an immensely brave woman.”

David’s face showed how taken aback he was.

“She had an oppressive childhood—she was an only child, remember—following on the trauma of adoption. A lot of people can handle that, she couldn’t. Then came an unhappy marriage, which ended in desertion, at a time when she was still suffering from postnatal depression.” He paused. “She may have tried to kill her child.”

“Oh, rubbish!”

“You’ve read the notes.”

“Compiled by someone you described as a rogue therapist.”

“Not at the start. He had no motive to mistreat her, then. And you might be surprised to learn how many women come within an ace of damaging either themselves or their babies, in the postnatal state.”

“But she’s a banister, damnit!”

“Isn’t the real point that she’s a strong, courageous woman?” Albert lowered his voice and curbed his delivery, radiating total conviction. “Against all the odds, she made it. Every single day of her life was a grueling, uphill battle with guilt, and feelings of rejection, and the fear of losing you, which is why she never told you about the stew she’d been in. A battle that she won, until right at the end. Until now. And now …” He leaned forward, resting on his elbows, until David could no longer avoid his gaze. “We’ve got to save her.”

Albert modestly felt that it would have been difficult to improve on his performance. But—inwardly he trembled—that didn’t mean Lescombe had swallowed it.

David broke the long silence that followed by saying, “How do you know all these things? You talk like a—”

“I was trained to know them. It’s part of my job.”

“Which is
what,
for Christ’s sake?”

“Cleaning up messes.”

“You see only a security ‘mess.’ I’m looking at my wife. I love Anna. She’s my whole life, all I’ve got.” David seemed on the verge of panic. “I don’t know your real name, I don’t know who you are, what you do…. You say you’re an army officer but you talk like a psychiatrist….”