The Rendezvous (20 page)

‘I didn't know you had told Kaplan,' he said. ‘Does he know about us now?'

‘I'm not sure,' Terese said. ‘I said I'd got over it, but I'm not sure if he believed me. It doesn't matter anyway. It doesn't matter who knows so long as they don't tell Robert.'

‘They will,' he said. ‘One day. I'll pick you up at three tomorrow, outside my office, sweetheart. And we'll go back to our Indian village.'

‘Joe! There's a personal call for you from Buenos Aires!' He didn't show surprise; they had instructions never to use his private number unless there was an emergency. He turned to his wife as he picked up the telephone. ‘This is a patient; close the door, will you, honey?'

‘What makes you think I'm interested,' his wife said. She went out and he spoke; the line was very clear.

‘Personal call to Dr. Kaplan. Is that Dr. Kaplan speaking? Go ahead, please, Dr. Kaplan is on the line for you.'

‘Hoffmeyer here; so sorry to disturb you at home, but we've been trying to contact you at your office this week and they said you were away on a conference. How are you?'

‘Fine,' Joe said. ‘I was in San Francisco. What's come up?'

‘We've had a report about your friend Amstat. It seems a bit confusing, and before I send it on I thought I could cut out some of the irrelevant details for you if we talked on the phone first. Does he have any difficulty with his hearing? Does he wear a deaf aid?'

The old file on Hugo Elsner said that after an illness in childhood he had become partly deaf. This barred him from active service in the German armed forces, so he had enlisted as a concentration-camp guard in Poland and rose to be commandant. He had personally executed two hundred and eighty Jewish male prisoners by shooting them in the back of the head, and more than 150,000 were gassed and incinerated during his two-year term. He had disappeared since the war and was last traced to Chile. The deaf aid was his only distinguishing mark.

‘His hearing is perfect,' Kaplan said, and then repeated it. ‘He has no trouble with his hearing at all – he doesn't wear any kind of an aid.'

Hoffmeyer drew a line through the name of Elsner. Other details were also at variance with Kaplan's brief description. Elsner had a large nose and dark eyes. This did not connote Kaplan's explicit ‘Aryan appearance.'

‘Okay, that cuts it down by one,' Hoffmeyer said. ‘What's the height and weight factor?'

‘Around six one or two, around 180 lb. Very fit physical specimen.'

Kronberg a major in the Reichswehr, wanted for blackmailing French Jews by threatening to denounce them to the Gestapo or the Vichy Militia and then informing on them when they had given all they had in securities, valuables and jewels, was five feet seven inches tall and weighed 135 lb. Aryan appearance – blond hair, regular Germanic features and blue eyes, last heard of living in high style in Rio in 1949 on the proceeds of his wartime extortions. He too had got a warning and vanished in time. A change in weight was possible but no short man could grow six or eight inches. Hoffmeyer crossed his name off too.

‘Does any of this help at all?' Kaplan said. ‘Wouldn't you just like to send me on the whole report?'

‘How much time have we got?' Hoffmeyer asked. ‘Is your friend going to stay around for a while?'

‘He says he'll be here for the next month; I don't see that he has any reason to move around right now; he did say he had business in Chicago, but that's been covered.'

An agent in Chicago had reported back to Kaplan already. He knew every detail of Terese's second visit to the apartment; he even knew about the flowers Amstat ordered for her, because the apartment janitor remarked on them. She had been lying, as he suspected. They were lovers in New York too; they were being watched everywhere, and everything they did was known.

‘Well – things take time, you know how it is,' Hoffmeyer hesitated for a moment. Then he decided to trust his own judgment.

‘I'll send you on the one report that's left, Dr. Kaplan. The trouble is, it isn't much. But it's all we've got that might help this particular diagnosis.'

‘You don't hold out much hope then?' Kaplan asked. ‘You don't think you can be of any help?'

‘I wouldn't like to commit myself. There's very little, as I said. But there's no harm in sending you this one report and you can form your own opinion. If by any chance it was the right one, we'd need a first-class specialist team to handle it. But – I don't think they'll be needed. You'll have it by airmail, Doctor. My kind regards to you and Mrs. Kaplan. Sorry to have disturbed you at home, but we like to get these things cleared up. I have my own report to make out, too. Goodbye.'

‘Goodbye,' Joe Kaplan said. ‘And thanks for calling.'

Hoffmeyer had been crossing off possible suspects; one wore a hearing aid, one was obviously the wrong height and weight. Both must have surfaced in South America or even America at some time and then been lost. It didn't sound as if Amstat was what Kaplan thought he was. The masquerade wasn't important. Unless he fitted in somewhere with this one report, this one man that Hoffmeyer hadn't cleared from their conversation, he was not an escaped war criminal on the Israeli list. And the old man hadn't sounded very hopeful. Well, he shrugged and went back into the living room. Even if Vera had picked up the extension or the operators listened in, they wouldn't have made anything out of what they heard. Airmail from Buenos Aires. Five days, a week. He didn't say anything to his wife and she went on reading the latest edition of
Vogue
as if he hadn't come into the room.

Ruth Bradford Hilton had been trying to make up her mind to talk to her brother for some time. There had been many opportunities; they spent some part of every day together, usually in conferences with lawyers while her husband sat in without attempting to take part. Bob had been wonderful over the whole business; she needed a cool head and a guiding hand in these situations. She was a woman who reacted very strongly to being thwarted; she had an equally powerful dislike of interference from outside. Her husband would never have been allowed to pull her up as her brother did, or to sometimes insist that the trust lawyers and executors were right on some points, and their side in the wrong.

She really loved Bob, and closeness in families as rich as theirs was very rare; especially among the old families. They had lost the close, clan attitudes which the Latin and Irish still fostered as a legacy from their immigrant beginnings. Ruth loved Bob, and she was finding it hard to stand by and see him being made to look a fool.

She said this to her husband, after they had left the Bradfords' apartment.

‘Give me a cigarette, darling, I'm worn out!' He did as she asked him and he sat beside her and patted her knee. He admired her and he was very fond of her indeed. He hadn't the slightest objection to being run by her or to keeping in the background in affairs that concerned her money. He was quite rich himself, though a beggar by his wife's standards, and he had not married her for her money.

‘You look damned tired,' he said. ‘I'll be glad when it's over. We might go away somewhere, Ruth. Why don't we join Bob and Terese in Portugal? Lovely place, Estoril; had some of my gayest times there before the war.' He never attempted to pronounce his sister-in-law's French name properly; it made it sound long and English with a final flat A.

‘They're not going to Portugal,' Ruth answered. ‘She's changed her mind; she's fallen in love with New York, it seems. After fifteen years of paying as short visits as possible, they look like taking root here.'

‘But I thought she went to Boston quite often still,' her husband said; he knew from his wife's expression that she was upset about something. He knew from experience that it would very soon come out.

‘Yes, she goes to the house. At least that's what she tells my bloody fool of a brother. It just so happens that the last three visits to Boston didn't take place at all. I wasn't checking up on her, I just called the housekeeper about those tapestries – you know, I told you about them, darling, we lent them to the Metropolitan Museum two years ago for an exhibition. They needed some slight work done on one of them, and I'd heard of a French firm that specialised – oh, the details don't matter, and I forgot to mention it to Terese, so I called up the housekeeper. It was pretty obvious that Terese hadn't been near the place. She'd made a couple of calls, but she'd never stayed a night there when she was out of New York.'

‘Oh.' He made a face. ‘What do you think it means, then?'

‘Oh, darling, for God's sake, don't be so naïve. She's got a boy friend, that's all. And she's spending the time with him when she tells Bob she's at the house. Or visiting friends, or whatever the hell the last excuse was. I don't think I can sit around and let her get away with it!'

‘Any idea who the man is?'

‘No. But that doesn't matter. What does matter is that she doesn't make a fool of my brother. The more I think of it.…' She got up and began moving round the room; she looked like a small, angry lioness. ‘The more I think of how good he's been to her – and let's face it, sweetheart, she's a nobody! She's a girl he brought back here, without a memory or a background and some sentimental story about an Allied bombing raid. She could have been anything. And she had that Jew backing her up. I suppose it was all part of the old pal's act; here's my best friend and here's my entrée to a nice fat practice if I take care of his little French wife for him. It's all very well, I can tell you think I'm being nasty, but my brother could have married any girl in the States; damn it, he could have had the world's pick, with his looks and background and his money! So this little tramp is not going to turn around and cheat him now. Not with me standing by, anyway.'

‘I should sit down, Ruth, and calm down,' her husband said. ‘Come on, my dear girl, don't go off the handle like that, it won't do any good. What Terese's background is, is neither here nor there. She's been married fifteen years and you've all been quite happy about her.'

‘Mother wasn't exactly an enthusiast,' Ruth interrupted. ‘But Bob was impossible; he wouldn't let anyone even talk to her at first, without he sat there, watching over her.'

‘But you did, didn't you? You liked her, and were quite happy about it?'

‘Yes,' she admitted. ‘Yes I was. But because it seemed to be working out well; Bob was happy with her; she never put a foot wrong, it looked like an ideal marriage. Except they had no childen. But he was like a bear with a sore head if you tried to mention that! I know what you're getting at, darling – how do I know that it's changed – just because she spends a night or two away and doesn't tell the truth about it – but it's more than that.'

‘What else is it?' he asked.

‘People are talking,' she said. ‘I can feel it; every time their name comes up I can see in people's faces that they know something and I don't. And she's different too. She's dropped the little-girl-lost act; she's – oh, I don't know how to put it – she's changed completely. It's ridiculous to say someone in their thirties suddenly grows up, but this is it. This is what I feel about her. I used to feel sorry for her in a way; she seemed so withdrawn, so dependent upon Bob. So long as he didn't find it a burden, I felt it was all right. I pitied her for it. But not now. She's a different person; even when she walks into a room, I notice it.'

‘Does Bob realise anything?'

‘If he does, he's too proud to say so,' his sister said. ‘I don't know what to do. I feel like asking her round here and telling her exactly what she can expect from all of us if she does anything to let Bob down! Or I can go to him. I can warn him. I think that's what I'll do!'

‘Oh well, I suppose you won't take any notice of me, sweetheart, but if you took my advice you wouldn't interfere at all. I certainly wouldn't tackle Terese; she'll only tell Bob and that could cause a major row between you. He's very fond of that girl, you know. I'd leave it alone, if I were you. It'll probably work out in the end.'

‘It'll work out in a divorce with Bob settling a million dollars on her – that's what usually happens. And then she marries some creep that she's been sleeping with and they get fat on it. You would say I shouldn't interfere!'

‘All right, darling, go ahead. If you must do something, you might try Bob direct. Personally I think he'll bite your head clean off!'

‘Oh so do I,' Ruth answered. ‘But all the same, I think I'll risk it.'

8

‘Darling,' Terese said, ‘I can't go to Chicago with you this week. I'm running out of excuses, and I just can't think of anything.'

‘You can say you're going to Boston – what's wrong with that?' They were walking together in Central Park; they had lunched together in Chinatown, and taken a cab to the Park. It was a beautiful spring day, and they walked like lovers, hand in hand through the trees.

‘I'll get caught; I can feel it. Everyone in our circle is gossiping about us, Karl. I can't make another trip out of New York so soon again. Even Bob is beginning to ask questions.'

‘What sort of questions?'

He had her hand in his arm and he squeezed it. Once already he had stopped and turned her round to kiss her. They were going back to his apartment afterwards; it had become part of their pattern to delay being alone, to eat and talk and go out, with the desire growing in them until by mutual need they hurried back to the apartment block and shut themselves in. Love; he often said the word to her, and it was an endearment and a question. This was something he had never believed possible for a man to feel for a woman. In his mind, a woman had always fitted into a certain category with the label ‘inferior' clearly marked. A woman was something that gave a man pleasure and children and was responsible for the wise administration of his home where his personal comforts had priority. His own mother, a dignified and austere woman, had filled this niche to perfection for his father. It was the ideal of German womanhood, and it had nothing to do with the way he felt about Terese Bradford. She had never been his type. He could remember liking tall, big-breasted women when he was young; he had never been attracted by the slim, delicate type, large-eyed and easily breakable. Not until she came into his office in the Avenue Foch. He could never have enough time with her; not just to make love to her, but to talk, to laugh, to share living. And to express the tenderness that overflowed from him towards her.