The Rendezvous (22 page)

‘Mrs. Harper.'

Mrs. Harper: forty-eight, married to an executive with an engineering firm; three teenage children, and an anxiety condition which took the form of a neurotic fear of going mad. She was an unhappy, uncertain creature, the victim of an approaching menopause and a husband too busy to give her the constant reassurance that her illness needed. Her dependence upon Joe Kaplan was pathetic, and she was a constant and often time-wasting patient. But time and patience were what she needed to rebuild the crumbling confidence which was the root of this delusion. ‘Tell Mrs. Harper I'm tied up right now. I'll have to keep her waiting. Otherwise she can make an appointment for tomorrow.' A minute later, his secretary buzzed back.

‘Mrs. Harper says she doesn't mind, Doctor. She says she'll wait.'

They always waited, sometimes for an hour or more if he were held up; it was the first sign that they were getting well when they felt confident enough to give up an appointment.

‘Okay,' he said. ‘I'll buzz you when I'm ready for her.' He put through the call himself. It was a number in Detroit, a private number, and it was the last link in a long and complicated chain.

‘Kaplan speaking,' he said. ‘You know about Hoffmeyer's report?'

‘We've been informed,' the voice on the other end said.

‘I'm sure it's Brunnerman. No doubt about it. Yes, a real lucky strike, this one. You can send the team up.'

‘It may take some days. Where is he?'

‘He'll be in Chicago from the eighteenth to the twenty-third next week. I've just spoken to him and confirmed this.'

‘Very good work. We'll take him there.'

Kaplan put his glasses back on, rearranged the papers and the photographs, put an extra clip on them, and shut them in his office safe. His part was over. Now it was the execution squad from Israel which would be flying in. He had a drink of water, took out Mrs. Harper's file, and made himself go through it to get his concentration back. At the end of twenty minutes, he felt ready.

‘Okay, Dora. Send in Mrs. Harper now.'

Amstat was asleep when the phone rang; for some minutes, it went on ringing and he thought it was part of a dream; when he finally woke and switched on the light he saw it was four o'clock in the morning.

‘Mr. Amstat?'

‘Yes – who is that?'

‘Brückner. Five of them left Tel Aviv the day before yesterday. They're after you. You haven't any time to waste; pack a bag and get on the first plane to Washington. There'll be a ticket and the necessary papers and money in the luggage office under the name of Dressler. Follow instructions exactly and you may have a chance. Are you listening? Are you there?'

After a moment, he answered. ‘Yes,' he said. ‘I'm here.'

‘You don't deserve help,' said the voice at the other end. ‘But, as Smith said, we've got other people to consider. We can't afford to let them catch you. You had no right to disregard our warning.'

‘I told Smith I wouldn't take your help again,' he said. ‘If I have to run, I'll run in my own way.' He hung up. Five men had left Tel Aviv. Brückner knew what he was talking about, and he had been a fool to turn him down. The first plane to Washington and ask for a package for Dressler at the other end. He was due to meet Terese in Boston that weekend. Now he had to throw his clothes into a bag and run, begin the endless paper-chase across the world, leaving it all behind, not even saying goodbye. That was the obstacle; it was such a small thing, such a piece of sentimental nonsense, that need to see her once again and tell her why he had to go. A telephone could do it. Now, he could pick it up, and put through the call, and say it to her quickly, Goodbye, Terese. I've been discovered, and they're after me. He wasn't going to do it. Not like that. If he had enough time to take a plane, then he could choose his own direction. He got up and began packing. He opened the door of his apartment, locked it, and went out leaving the hall light burning. He went down the back stairs and out through the service entrance at the back. The street outside was empty. He was being watched, that was obvious, but not at that hour of night. They must think he was safe where he was at that hour. He walked for nearly five blocks before he saw a single cab, crawling slowly along in search of a drunk or a whore with a client. He told the driver to take him to the airport. At 7 a.m. he boarded a plane which caught a connection to Boston.

They stood facing each other in the enormous drawing room; the Aubusson carpet had been woven for Louis Philippe and his monogram was the centrepiece; there were wall panels painted by Fragonard, and the pretty women with their unrealistic lovers flirted in the trees and pavilions under skies that were always blue in a landscape full of flowers. It was a treasure house of the past of other countries, other cultures, and at nine in the morning it made the two people feel a sense of emptiness, as if they were meeting in the Frick Museum. The housekeeper had answered the door when Amstat rang; he had phoned Terese from the airport, explaining nothing except that he was coming straight to see her. The housekeeper had shown him into the drawing room because the small study wasn't quite ready. She disapproved of Mrs. Robert always using it, and leaving the famous drawing room with its furniture collection and its tribute to the taste of the old Mrs. Bradford shut up and unused.

‘Karl, what is it? What's happened?'

He didn't come towards her, or touch her. He had rehearsed what to say and if he took her in his arms, he wouldn't be able to say it as it should be said.

‘I've come to say goodbye, Terese. I can't stay long or keep our date for this weekend; I've just come to say goodbye, my darling.'

‘No! No, you can't, Karl!' As he didn't come to her, she ran to him, and the chance to get it done was lost. ‘What's happened, darling? Darling, what's the matter?…'

‘I had a call yesterday,' he said. ‘They're on to me; I've got to run for it again.'

‘No, no, darling! No!' she kept repeating it. ‘How could they find you?…'

‘It doesn't matter how,' he said. He made her look at him and kissed her. ‘Don't cry, Terese. I don't want to see you cry. I was a fool …' He broke away from her, but she caught at his hand. ‘I shouldn't have come here; I've only upset you, hurt you! It was selfishness. I wanted to see you just once more.'

‘Where are you going?' she said. ‘Oh, Karl, darling! Don't hold me off; come and sit down somewhere – how I hate this room! There's nowhere comfortable to sit, no proper chairs or sofas. Come into the study.' She had always disliked this room; she had felt a stranger in it, and now she hated it, and the house and everything in her life it represented. ‘Come with me! Down the passage here; this is my room.'

She drew the curtains back, and opened the windows; it was a comfortable room, but still dominated by her dead mother-in-law's desk, which had come from the Trianon and was too valuable to be moved.

‘At least you can sit down here without feeling it's a sacrilege! Now, sweetheart. Let's be calm, let's talk this out together. Tell me exactly what happened.' She had stopped crying; she wiped her eyes and waited.

‘I got a call in the middle of the night; the people who helped me before – I told you about it. The Israelis left some days ago; I don't know how my people knew, but they have a good intelligence system. They set up an escape route for me – papers, money, the usual thing.' He sat there, holding tightly to her hand, knowing he should have been in Washington, D.C., and on his way under another name.

‘I didn't take it. I'm going alone from now on. If they catch up with me, they catch up with me. I'm tired of running, anyway.'

‘They'll kill you, won't they?' she said. ‘This is the murder squad, isn't it?'

‘Yes. They won't take me back with them. I'm not important enough.'

‘You're important to me,' she said. ‘You're the most important thing in the world. How much money have you got?'

‘A few hundred dollars. Don't worry about that, darling. I've managed on less.'

She looked into his face and smiled; she had always been beautiful within the limit of her type of delicacy and colouring; now love irradiated that beauty. It warmed him, as if he were suddenly in sunshine.

‘I'm going with you, Karl,' she said. ‘Don't argue with me, I've made up my mind.'

He shook his head, fighting the resolution, the passion which she was conveying, silently, as they looked at each other.

‘You are not coming with me. You don't understand what may happen.'

‘I called them the murder squad,' she said. ‘I understand exactly. And I'm going with you. What happens to you happens to both of us from now on. I belong to you, Karl. You can't leave me behind, and I won't let you. We go together.'

‘It's impossible.' He said it very gently. ‘You have no idea what life will be like. You've been comfortable, safe – look at all this! If I escape them, and I think I will, it'll mean odd jobs, dirty boarding houses, back-street living. Years of it, maybe. I asked you to leave your husband, but that was different. I could offer you something then. I had a future. Now I've nothing. I'm going, Terese. And I'm going alone.'

She got up and lit a cigarette. She seemed quite calm and confident too.

‘I would rather live in one room with you for the rest of my life than spend one more day here. I'm not going back to Robert – ever. You said the moment would come when I left him, and it has. I'm finished now. I love you, and you're all I've got to live for. It's as simple as that. If you've got to run, I must run with you. If you die, I die too. I told you once, when I knew who I was, and you told me what you'd done, that I ran out thinking to go home and realised I'd no home to go to. It's still true; I don't belong anywhere here. I only belong to you. And I'm not soft, just because of all this – as you call it.'

She held out her right hand to him.

‘Finger by finger, with a hammer. I can take anything you can, my darling, and you can't deny that. We go together.' She came up to him and held out her hand. He took it and kissed it.

‘All right,' he said. ‘All right, God forgive me, all right, we go together. But if there's any danger, you've got to promise to do what I say!'

‘I promise,' she said. ‘If there's danger, I'll do what you say. How much time have we got? And where are we going?'

‘We must get out of here,' he said. ‘They'll be watching the airports by tomorrow, when they find I'm not in Chicago. New York, Washington, everywhere – and the seaports, of course. They'll expect me to run south, try to get across the Mexican border and then down. I've been trying to work something out. I think we should try and do the unexpected. We can drive right across the States and then turn up north somewhere in Montana or Washington and over the Canadian border.'

‘If they watch the airports, we're limited to the railroads or the highways,' Terese said.

‘I've no car, and we need something fast and reliable.'

‘We have two cars laid up here,' she said. ‘Just waiting in case Robert or I want to go down the street. So we have a car. And we have money too. I can draw ten thousand dollars from the bank here – more if you like, but it might cause comment. And there's this …' She touched the inch-square diamond on her finger. ‘And the few things I brought with me to look pretty for you, darling; they'll come in very useful later on. I'm going to tell the housekeeper to make a packed lunch for us, while I get some things together.' She went to the desk and pressed a foot bell under the carpet. ‘I spent the first year of my marriage here; my mother-in-law used to sit in this room in the mornings writing letters and going through the menu. After she died I remember sitting at this desk trying to find the courage to ring for Mrs. James, who let you in. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it for three months; I used to go and get things for myself or wait till I ran into her to ask about something, rather than put my foot on that bell. Thank God I'll never have to worry about ringing it again.'

‘What are your cars?' he said.

‘A Bentley convertible and a Ford; the Ford's last year's model, the Bentley's new.'

‘The Ford sounds the best,' he said. ‘Fast and not so conspicuous. We don't want to be noticed. That's very important.'

‘We won't be,' she said. ‘Because they'll be looking for one man, and we'll be two. From now on, we've got to behave normally – till we're away from here. Oh, Mrs. James, we're going on a picnic lunch and then I'll be driving back to New York afterwards. Will you have something ready for us in an hour, and you can shut my room up. I shan't be here for the weekend, after all.'

‘Very good, madam. Is there anything the gentleman prefers in a packed lunch?'

‘What would you like, Karl? Mrs. James is a magician at these things – she can produce anything you fancy.'

‘I've no preference,' he said. ‘I leave it to you.'

‘We leave it to you,' she said to the housekeeper. She had been in awe of her for years; now she wasn't afraid of anyone. ‘Thank you, that's all, Mrs. James. We'll be using the Ford, so you can put everything in the boot.' When the door closed, he got up and took her in his arms.

‘Loving, and brave too. I have everything in you; I don't deserve it.'

‘Kiss me,' she said simply. ‘And then I'm going to pack.'

‘What the hell is going on?' Vera Kaplan said. ‘That's the second call you've had from Buenos Aires in two days.'

‘Professional calls,' Kaplan said. He was trying to read the
New York Times
; it was a day old, but he had picked it up because it was the first thing he could get hold of; he had to read or do something to cover himself.