The Holcroft Covenant (10 page)

Noel watched the Brazilian inhale the smoke from his precious Havana. He was not sure why, but he felt suddenly uneasy.
Don’t be led into a trap by pat conclusions casually stated
.… “I can’t. I think you’re exaggerating, and obviously you won’t help me.” He stood up.

“Very well,” said the Brazilian. “I’ll tell you what you would find out for yourself. When you get to Rio de Janeiro, go to the Ministry of Immigration. If you have names and approximate dates, perhaps they can help you.”

“Thanks very much,” said Noel, turning toward the door.

The Brazilian walked rapidly out of the office into a large anteroom that served as a reception area. A young man sitting in an armchair quickly got to his feet at the sight of his superior.

“You may have your office back now, Juan.”

“Thank you, Excellency.”

The older man continued across the room, past a receptionist, to a pair of double doors. On the left panel was the great seal of the República Federal de Brasil; on the right was a plaque with gold printing that read
OFÍCIO DO CÔNSUL GENERAL.

The consul general went inside to another, smaller anteroom that was his secretary’s office. He spoke to the girl and walked directly to the door of his own office.

“Get me the embassy. The ambassador, please. If he’s not there, locate him. Inform him that it’s a confidential matter; he’ll know whether he can talk or not.”

Brazil’s highest-ranking diplomat in America’s major city closed the door, strode to his desk, and sat down. He picked up a sheaf of papers stapled together. The first several
pages were photocopies of newspaper stories, accounts of the killing on British Airways flight 591 from London to New York, and the subsequent discovery of the two murders on the ground. The last two pages were copies of that aircraft’s passenger manifest. The diplomat scanned the names:
HOLCROFT, NOEL. DEP. GENEVA. BA
#577.
O. LON. BA
#591.
X. NYC.
He stared at the information as if somehow relieved that it was still there.

His telephone hummed; he picked it up. “Yes?”

“The ambassador is on the line, sir.”

“Thank you.” The consul general heard an echo, which meant the scrambler was in operation. “Mr. Ambassador?”

“Yes, Geraldo. What’s so urgent and confidential?”

“A few minutes ago a man came up here asking how he might go about locating a family in Rio he had not been able to reach through the usual channels. His name is Holcroft. Noel Holcroft, an architect from New York City.”

“It means nothing to me,” said the ambassador. “Should it?”

“Only if you’ve recently read the list of passengers on the British Airways plane from London last Saturday.”

“Flight five-ninety-one?” The ambassador spoke sharply.

“Yes. He left that morning from Geneva on British Airways, and transferred at Heathrow to five-ninety-one.”

“And now he wants to locate people in Rio? Who are they?”

“He refused to say. I was the ‘attaché’ he spoke with, naturally.”

“Naturally. Tell me everything. I’ll cable London. Do you think it’s possible—” The ambassador paused.

“Yes,” the consul general said softly. “I think it’s very possible he is looking for the Von Tiebolts.”

“Tell me everything,” repeated the man in Washington. “The British believe those killings were the work of the Tinamou.”

Noel felt a sense of
déjà vu
as he looked around the lounge of the Braniff 747. The colors were more vivid, the uniforms of the aircraft’s personnel more fashionably cut. Otherwise, the plane seemed identical to that of British Airways flight 591. The difference was in
attitude. This was the Rio Run, that carefree holiday that was to begin in the sky and continue on the beaches of the Gold Coast.

But this was to be no holiday, thought Holcroft, no holiday at all. The only climax awaiting him was one of discovery. The whereabouts or the nonwhereabouts of the family Von Tiebolt.

They’d been in the air for more than five hours. He had picked his way through a dismissable meal, slept through an even more dismissable film, and finally decided to go up to the lounge.

He had put off going upstairs. The memory of seven days ago was still discomforting. The unbelievable had happened in front of his eyes; a man had been killed not four feet from where he’d been sitting. At one point he could have reached over and
touched
the writhing figure. Death had been inches away, unnatural death, chemical death, murder.

Strychnine
. A colorless crystalline alkaloid that caused paroxysms of unendurable pain. Why had it happened? Who was responsible and for what reason? The accounts were specific, the theories speculative.

Two men had been physically close to the victim in the lounge of Flight 591 from London. Either one could have administered the poison by way of the victim’s drink; it was presumed one had. But again, why? According to the Port Authority police, there was no evidence that the two men had ever known Thornton. And the two men themselves—the suspected killers—had met
their
deaths by gunshot in a fuel truck on the ground. They had disappeared from the aircraft, from the sealed-off customs area, from the quarantined room, and themselves been murdered. Why? By whom?

No one had any answers. Only questions. And then even the questions stopped. The story faded from the newspapers and the broadcasts as dramatically as it had appeared, as though a blackout had been called. Again, why? Again, who was responsible?

“That was scotch on the rocks, wasn’t it, Mr. Holcroft.”

The
déjà vu
was complete. The words were the same but spoken by another. The stewardess above him, placing the glass on the round Formica table, was attractive—as the stewardess in Flight 591 had been attractive. The
look in her eyes had that same quality of directness he remembered from the girl on British Airways. The words, even to the use of his name, were uttered in a similar tone, only the accent varied. It was all
too
much alike. Or was his mind—his eyes, his ears, his senses—preoccupied with the memory of seven days ago?

He thanked the stewardess, almost afraid to look at her, thinking that any second he would hear a scream beside him and watch a man in uncontrollable agony lunge out of his seat, twisting in spastic convulsions over the divider.

Then Noel realized something else, and it discomforted him further. He was sitting in the same seat he had occupied during those terrifying moments on Flight 591. In a lounge constructed identically with that lounge a week ago. It was not really unusual; he preferred the location and often sat there. But now it seemed macabre. His lines of sight were the same, the lighting no different now from the way it was then.

That was scotch on the rocks, wasn’t it, Mr. Holcroft?

An outstretched hand, a pretty face, a glass.

Images, sounds.

Sounds
. Raucous, drunken laughter. A man with too much alcohol in him, losing his balance, falling backward over the rim of the chair. His companion reeling in delight at the sight of his unsteady friend. A third man—the man who would be dead in moments—trying too hard to be a part of the revelry. Anxious to please, wanting to join. An attractive stewardess pouring whisky, smiling, wiping the bar on which two drinks had been reduced to one because one had been spilled, rushing around the counter to help a drunken passenger. The third anxious man, embarrassed perhaps, still wanting to play with the big boys, reaching.…

A
glass. The
glass! The single, remaining glass on the bar.

The third man had reached for that glass!

It was scotch on the rocks. The drink intended for the passenger sitting across the lounge at the small Formica table. Oh, my
God!
thought Holcroft, the images racing back and forth in sequence in his mind’s eye. The drink on the bar—the drink a stranger named Thornton had taken—had been meant for
him!

The strychnine had been meant for
him!
The twisting,
horrible convulsions of agony were to be
his!
The terrible death assigned to
him!

He looked down at the glass in front of him on the table; his fingers were around it.

That was scotch on the rocks, wasn’t it?
…

He pushed the drink aside. Suddenly he could no longer stay at that table, remain in that lounge. He had to
get
away; he had to force the images out of his mind. They were too clear, too real, too horrible.

He rose from the chair and walked rapidly, unsteadily, toward the staircase. The sounds of drunken laughter weaved in and out between an unrelenting scream of torment that was the screech of sudden death. No one else could hear those sounds, but they pounded in his head.

He lurched down the curving staircase to the deck below. The light was dim; several passengers were reading under the beams of tiny spotlights, but most were asleep.

Noel was bewildered. The hammering in his ears would not stop, the images would not go away. He felt the need to vomit, to expunge the fear that had settled into his stomach. Where was the toilet? In the galley … behind the galley? Beyond the curtain; that was it. Or was it? He parted the curtain.

Suddenly, his eyes were drawn down to his right, to the front seat of the 747’s second section. A man had stirred in his sleep. A heavyset man whose face he had seen before. He did not recall where, but he was sure of it! A face creased in panic, racing by, close to his. What was it about the face? Something had made a brief but strong impression. What
was
it?

The
eyebrows
; that was it! Thick eyebrows, the coiled, matted hair an odd mixture of black and white. Salt-and-pepper eyebrows;
where
was it? Why did the sight of those strangely arresting brows trigger obscure memories of another act of violence? Where
was
it? He could not remember, and because he could not, he felt the blood rushing to his head. The pounding grew louder; his temples throbbed.

Suddenly, the man with the thick, coiled eyebrows woke up, somehow aware that he was being stared at. Their eyes locked; recognition was absolute.

And there was violence in that recognition. But of
what? When? Where?

Holcroft nodded awkwardly, unable to think. The
pain in his stomach was knifelike; the sounds in his head were now cracks of thunder. For a moment he forgot where he was; then he remembered and the images returned. The sights and sounds of a killing that but for an accident would have claimed his life.

He had to get back to his seat. He had to control himself, to stop the pain and the thunder and the pounding in his chest. He turned and walked quickly beyond the curtain, past the galley, up the aisle to his seat.

He sat down in the semidarkness, grateful there was no one beside him. He pressed his head into the rim of the chair and closed his eyes, trying with all his concentration to rid his mind of the terrible sight of a grotesque face, screaming away the last few seconds of life. But he could not.

That face became
his
face.

Then the features blurred, as if the flesh were melting, only to be formed again. The face that now came into focus was no one he recognized. A strange, angular face, parts of which seemed familiar, but not as a whole.

Involuntarily, he gasped. He had never seen that face but suddenly he knew it. Instinctively. It was the face of Heinrich Clausen. A man in agony thirty years ago. The unknown father with whom he had his covenant.

Holcroft opened his eyes, which stung from the perspiration that had rolled down his face. There was another truth and he was not sure he wanted to recognize it. The two men who had tried to kill him with strychnine had themselves been murdered. They had interfered.

The men of Wolfsschanze had been aboard that plane.

The clerk behind the desk of the Pôrto Alegre Hotel pulled Holcroft’s reservation from the file. A small yellow message envelope was stapled to the back of the card. The clerk tore it off and handed it to Noel.

“This came for you shortly past seven o’clock this evening, senhor.”

Holcroft knew no one in Rio de Janeiro, and had told no one in New York where he was going. He ripped open the flap and drew out the message. It was from Sam Buonoventura. He was to return the overseas call as soon as possible, regardless of the hour.

Holcroft looked at his watch; it was nearly midnight. He signed the register and spoke as casually as he could, his mind on Sam.

“I have to telephone Curaçao. Will there be any trouble at this hour?”

The clerk seemed mildly offended. “Certainly not with our
telefonistas
, senhor. I cannot speak for Curaçao.”

The origins of the difficulty notwithstanding, it was not until one-fifteen in the morning that he heard Buonoventura’s rasping voice over the line.

“I think you’ve got a problem, Noley.”

“I’ve got more than one. What is it?”

“Your answering service gave my number to this cop in New York, a Lieutenant Miles; he’s a detective. He was hot as hell. Said you were supposed to inform the police if you left town, to say nothing about leaving the country.”

Christ
, he had forgotten! And now he understood just how vital those instructions were. The strychnine was meant for him! Had the police reached the same conclusion?

“What did you tell him, Sam?”

“Got hot myself. It’s the only way to handle angry
cops. I told him you were off in the out-islands doing a survey for a possible installation Washington was interested in. A little bit north, we’re not too far from the Canal Zone; it could mean anything. Nobody talks.”

“Did he accept that?”

“Hard to tell. He wants you to call him. I bought you time, though. I said you radioed in this afternoon and I didn’t expect to hear from you for three or four days, and I couldn’t make contact. That’s when he yelled like a cut bull.”

“But did he buy it?”

“What else could he do? He thinks we’re all fucking-A stupid down here, and I agreed with him. He gave me two numbers for you. Got a pencil?”