Patricia Potter (31 page)

He shaved quickly, looking carefully in the mirror. How much had he changed in twenty-one years.

He was fifty-two. His blond hair was still thick and held only the slightest, almost undetectable, hint of gray. His body was as taut and lean as it had been twenty years ago. He worked hard, and he cared little about food; it was fuel, little more, and he used it as such. Eating could be a lonely business, especially if you never invited anyone to share it, so he subsisted on coffee and a piece of toast in the morning, usually a quick sandwich or salad at lunch, and often skipped dinner altogether.

His face had aged. Even he could see that. Lines stretched from his eyes, and his skin was dark from being outside so much; he was never happy delegating complete authority, and he often visited the various logging sites.

How much had he changed? He didn’t know. No one was a good judge of his own appearance, but he was aware that the angles of his face had hardened, that lines had etched deeper around his eyes although he seldom laughed. The furrows came from the sun and work and time.

To hell with it, he thought. He wasn’t here for courting. He was here for one purpose, to protect Meara. He wished like hell Sanders were still alive. Chris knew he could have gotten word to Sanders Evans, could have talked to him. Part of him had always known that. His first thought when he’d been told of Kurt Weimer’s trip was to call Sanders and put the problem in his lap. But Sanders was dead, and there was no one he could trust, no one who knew exactly what had happened that night, no one who would believe him. He would only risk jail, leaving Meara alone and unprotected.

It was July, and blistering hot. He checked his suitcase for suitable clothing. There was little. The temperatures in the northwest were cooler, more comfortable, and most of his clothing consisted of either business suits or the rough logging shirts and trousers he wore on site.

He finally chose a pair of dark blue slacks and a light blue cotton long-sleeved shirt, rolling up its sleeves past his elbows and leaving the neck open. He looked at the gun he had purchased before leaving Washington. It was steel gray and deadly looking. He had bought the pistol immediately after deciding on the trip to Jekyll, and he’d been to the practice range several times to replenish old skills. He had been surprised at how naturally the weapon fit into his hands and how quickly his aim had returned. It was a surprisingly uncomfortable feeling. He had wanted to put that behind him.

The broker at the real estate office was more than prepared for him.

“Stan Cable,” he said as he introduced himself. “I think I have a few listings you might like. Are you sure you want Jekyll? There’s a greater choice on Sea Island and Saint Simons.”

“Jekyll,” Chris said.

“I have one on the beach, but it’s quite expensive, and we’ll need references.”

“Where on the beach?” Chris asked curtly.

The realtor showed him a map.

“Where’s Beachview,” Chris asked.

The realtor showed him the main street that ran along the beach for a distance, then veered slightly away. Small streets split away from Beachview, most of them ending in small cul de sacs.

Chris nodded. He had a good idea from the map where Meara’s house was. The available rental was two blocks down, overlooking the water. It was perfect.

He wrote down three names and telephone numbers. “Your secretary can check the references while we sign the papers and I check out of my hotel.”

“But you haven’t seen it,” the man protested.

Chris gave him his most charming smile. “I trust your judgment,” he said.

The realtor grinned. “Yes, sir.”

Two hours later, Chris signed the papers and handed Stan Cable a check.

Chris stopped at a store to get some groceries. Coffee and bread and some cold cuts. He didn’t know what was on the island now, and he didn’t want to run into Meara by accident. He needed to control the situation. If, he amended silently, control was even a possibility.

He doubted whether anything or anyone could control what was coming. But he had to try. God knew it would be difficult enough without an audience. He had to meet her alone. But then, he thought wryly, she might not even recognize him. Twenty years was a long time.

Chris drove slowly over the causeway, remembering the agonizing, bitter trip in the small motorboat years ago. The water was calm now, like gray velvet. He passed over a short drawbridge that spanned the intracoastal waterway, and then he was on the island again.

The great moss-draped oaks were as he remembered, but so much else had changed. The crushed-shell roads and dirt trails had been replaced by pavement. As he reached the main road, he saw several low-slung motels and a small shopping center. Care had evidently been taken to preserve much of the natural beauty, and the landscaping was still exquisite. But now there were cars and people where once there had been serenity and solitude. The sense of majestic isolation was gone, stolen forever.

He turned down the road which led to the Jekyll Island Clubhouse. It stood empty and deteriorating and abandoned, as were the magnificent cottages that ringed it. They were like discarded toys, lifeless and without magic because there was no longer anyone to love them. He felt a deep sense of loss as he looked at the empty, cracked pool, the rotting boards around the tennis courts, the general air of neglect over something once so grand.

He remembered the orchestra music that had drifted softly from the dining room when he and Meara had walked the lush grounds, the light, bubbling sound of cultivated voices, the well-dressed men and women at an afternoon picnic, the game of bowls in the afternoons.

Something of history and a remarkable period had been swept away by time and events. He hated to think that he might have been partly responsible, or had the closing simply been the natural end to one of the last storybook eras, its time already gone when he had entered it?

He left his car and walked out to what was left of the abandoned wharf. The club launches were gone, of course. And the yacht. The marshes looked so peaceful, so peaceful today in the sunlight, so different from when an explosion had lit them with fiery red light.

“Michael!”

He could still hear her agonized cry ringing out over the river. It had haunted his nights for years, and now it seemed to echo over the calm, even water. He shivered in the heat, his insides as cold as ice, as that night returned in its entirety, every terrible second.

How did he believe he could come back?

He turned abruptly and strode to his car, yanking the door open with a force that shook its entire frame. He started the engine and turned down the narrow paved drive to the main road and to the house he had rented.

Kurt Weimer had arrived that afternoon but was not to be disturbed, the operator at the Cloister Hotel on Sea Island informed Chris when he called from his rented house. Was there a message?

Chris answered with a negative, saying he would call back, and thanked her. He hung up, but he didn’t move from his rigid pose.

He’d hoped against hope that something might happen at the last moment, that Weimer wouldn’t arrive. The more he’d seen of the island, the more he had realized how difficult meeting Meara would be. Perhaps, he wondered, he was anticipating trouble where there was none. Perhaps Weimer’s visit here was exactly what it was purported to be.

His sixth sense told him something else altogether. His gut coiled in a tight knot as he thought of the rumors surrounding Weimer.

He replaced his good shoes with a pair of comfortable loafers and ventured down to the water where he turned left. Meara’s home was, he knew, two blocks to the right. He hadn’t seen anyone even remotely resembling his mental picture of her, and he felt relatively safe from encountering her.

Chris found himself moving toward the place of the picnic so long ago. It was now a state camping ground, he knew from the map, but that made no difference. The pull on him was incredibly strong, as were so many of the sights and smells since he first arrived on the island. There were so many memories of the one time he had felt so spectacularly alive.

He found the spot, at least he thought he had. Everything about it had been ingrained in his memory. He looked at his watch; the hour was late afternoon, and the tide was coming in, reaching its fingers farther and farther up the beach toward the dunes and the wind-sculpted oak trees that stood so tenaciously against the sea and wind.

Chris wondered if Meara ever came here, if she ever remembered as he did. Why else would she continue to come here year after year?

He had wondered about that. He had seized upon those few sentences in the detective’s quarterly reports. Starting in 1950, she had returned to the island at least once a year and then more often after she had received the cottage.

Chris knew about that too. Thank God she’d had friends that night, and the weeks and months that followed. Thank God she’d had Sanders Evans. And thank God she had apparently never come to hate the place she called the “island of dreams.”

Paralyzed by an odd enervation, he stayed on the beach, watching people come and go with a strange detachment. Tomorrow morning he would park down the street from Meara’s house and see who came and went. If Weimer made no move toward Meara, then neither would he. Meara deserved some peace in her life.

Kurt Weimer had engaged one of the beach cottages at the Cloister for his two-week stay. An assistant was staying at the main hotel, but Kurt wanted privacy.

He had waited a very long time for this. The conference was a minor one, one he usually would have refused until he learned its location.

The coast of Georgia. The place where his father had died.

Kurt had been eleven when he learned of his father’s death. He had been a leader in Hitler Youth and was immensely proud of his father’s position in the elite SS.

Kurt cared little about his mother, a weak, ineffectual woman, but he deeply admired his father in his handsome black uniform and aura of authority. The other boys took notice and were respectful, although they might talk mockingly behind his back. Once he had heard two boys ridiculing his father, and he had informed on them. The next day, they were gone from school.

His father took him for long walks, and Kurt had sensed the fear from those they passed. He felt it and he enjoyed it. He felt important, somebody. His father told him how Hitler had given pride back to Germany, to the German people. He must never forget that pride, his father said. The Third Reich would last a thousand years and he, Hans’s son, must be prepared to assume his rightful leadership in its future.

The Third Reich. The future of Germany.

Before his father left the last time, he had told Kurt that he had been especially selected for a glorious mission for the Fatherland, one that could help win the war. The Weimers would be honored, he’d said. The German Knight’s Cross would be his father’s award, presented by the Führer himself.

Kurt had told all the other boys in Hitler Youth, and had waited. And waited. Four months later, two men came to visit his mother, and he’d heard her sob.

Hans Weimer was dead in the service of his country. But neither he nor his mother were told why. Kurt was left with a letter from his father, a letter telling him always to be loyal to the Führer, to the new and strong Germany, to the Third Reich. It became young Kurt’s most treasured possession, especially as the war worsened. There were those who did not believe, who betrayed the man and the party who had brought Germany from chaos, but Kurt believed. His faith never wavered. Not even during the last dark days of 1944 and the first months of 1945 when Berlin was bombed day and night, and the allies and Russians closed in on the doomed city.

At fourteen, he led what was left of his Hitler’s Youth comrades, some boys twelve and younger, to defend the beleaguered city. He fought until he was wounded, and still he fought. His small band annihilated, he was finally pulled away by a German officer who had seen enough and tried to surrender. Kurt shot him.

Another officer had watched everything and approached Hans carefully. “Ah, a fine little fighter. We’ll need you in the days ahead,” he said, and identified himself as a member of the SS.

They escaped Berlin together, the officer and the boy, disguised as forced laborers. Kurt hadn’t liked the idea, but his companion promised there was honor ahead. The first priority, he’d said, was to help as many loyal Germans as possible to escape the Allied net. All the members of SS were marked for persecution. But if they escaped, they could work secretly in other countries and someday restore the glory of the Third Reich. The name of the organization was Odessa.

The officer was Stefan Kranz, and he became another father to Kurt. He had money, a lot of money, though Kurt never knew where it came from. He bought a new identity for himself and offered to adopt Kurt. But Kurt was proud of his father, and he decided to keep his own name. But he did stay with Stefan.

Kurt soon discovered that Stefan’s wife and twin baby sons had been killed in the fire bombing at Dresden. They had been sent away from Berlin for safety. Two days later they had died in the raging inferno which had once been among Germany’s most beautiful cities.

Stefan, Kurt knew, had one great goal in life: to restore the Third Reich to its proper place, to finish the job Hitler had started. Dozens of former SS officers and concentration camp personnel passed through their home to America, to Brazil, to Argentina. Kurt kept scrupulous records in code as to their number and destination. They would be asked to repay some day.