The Rendezvous (27 page)

‘And in exchange for that?' Kaplan asked.

‘I'll meet your people at a definite place; I'll come out, and they can do what they like after that.'

‘Where are you now?'

‘At Helena, Montana. We should be at Spokane tomorrow night and there's a motel on U.S. 10 where we'll stop tomorrow – place called Rock-a-bye Motel. They can find me there.'

‘All right,' Kaplan said. ‘I have to contact them. And you'll stay there?'

‘We'll be there from tomorrow evening. At eleven o'clock, I'll come out of the cabin – alone. I won't be armed. You have my word on that.'

‘I'll take it,' Kaplan said.

‘And no one will go near Terese? She won't be harmed? You promise that?'

‘I promise,' Kaplan said. ‘Just so long as you stick by the deal. You come out alone, at eleven o'clock. No gun. Just walk outside.'

‘I'll be there,' Amstat said.

‘We will be waiting for you.'

He hung up, and instead of leaving the booth, he waited inside it for a minute, and lit a cigarette. It hadn't been so difficult; it was much less difficult than pulling the trigger on oneself, and he hadn't been able to do that, years ago, when the weight of his guilt seemed too heavy to bear. He had lost the sense of it now; Lodz didn't matter any more. The dead were dead; the blood was lost in the soil, the bones had rotted into fragments. He felt nothing any longer, not even brave because he had sentenced himself to death to save Terese. His only sensation was one of relief that the major terror of the last few hours was lifted from him. It was so acute that it was almost an hallucination, where the cabin door burst open and before he died, he saw their bullets hitting Terese and her body dropping like a broken doll. That wouldn't happen now. When he came out of the booth and walked back to the diner where she was waiting for him, he was whistling; he felt happy. It was almost over, and they had forty-eight hours together without fear.

After Joe Kaplan called Detroit, he tried to ring Julia; he had to talk to someone, but there wasn't any answer. She was out. It still seemed impossible; he couldn't quite believe that the conversation with Brunnerman had ever taken place. It was a fantasy, a wish fulfilment, dreamed up because he had been so sick with worry and frustration the last few days. The special squad from Israel had completely lost the trail. The report from Lake Itasca was the last they had on Brunnerman, and the only Jewish-owned hotel near the highway they were supposed to be on had turned out to be a joker instead of an ace. The husband and wife were middle-aged, American-born Jews; he had had a report direct of the reaction to questions and then a straight appeal for help.

‘We're Americans; we don't want any part of this killing business. Look at all that nasty talk about that Eichmann guy, and everyone saying us Jews did something illegal. And kidnapping ain't right. Look, it's twenty years ago – you can't hate for ever. We're not getting mixed up in any trouble. We don't go for murder – you got something on this guy, why don't you call the cops?'

A blank; an obstinate, disapproving blank. That had been the first of many. In the process, they had lost Brunnerman and the woman, and the search was at a standstill; Detroit was beginning to think they had branched off and gone south, just to confuse the issue. The Israeli team were standing by, waiting. Then the call came through, the call he had just taken less than half an hour ago. That was the crazy part, the fantasy. They'd got away; three more days and they were over the Canadian border, and they were safe. Whoever Brunnerman thought was following him, it surely wasn't the Israelis. That was the incredible link in the whole improbable chain. ‘Your people are after me, they've been following me for two days.' It was probably a couple of commercial travellers on the road. Kaplan could have laughed out loud at the irony of it. He had given himself up to them because of a mistake. And because he had a woman with him that he loved; he wouldn't risk her life any longer.

Joe sat on by the telephone; he had forgotten to call Julia again. He was a psychiatrist, a mind-doctor, head-shrinker, witch-doctor – any variety of names, contemptuous and otherwise, would fit what he was supposed to be. He was supposed to know about people, know enough to attack the problems they couldn't overcome themselves, supply the missing personality parts and send out a whole product, or nearly whole, into the pressures of ordinary living.

Here is a problem for you, Doctor. Solve this one for me, will you? Take a man, an intelligent, well-educated man from an upper-middle-class background, father a professor, and tell me why he joins one of the most vicious organisations in the world. How come that kind of man works in the Gestapo? He's a psychopath, a paranoiac, a sadist – out come all the easy answers. He ends up by ordering a mass murder. Men, women, little children, weeping in the snow, standing on the edge of their graves, while his men set up the machine-guns and he stands there, watching, listening, waiting till it's all properly organised, like a well-trained German officer should, and then he gives the order. Fire!

Four thousand people die; a speck in the dust heap of six million dead, but they were his personal contribution to that dust. A psychopath, a paranoiac, a sadist – the pattern is perfect except for the one glaring flaw in it. He is capable of human love. Madmen only love themselves. The truly evil are supreme narcissists, ruthlessly self-obsessed, without pity or imagination. Brunnerman killed thousands, but he can't let one woman die to try to save his own life. He shouldn't be capable of this; he shouldn't be capable of loving anyone, but he is. As capable as she is of dying with him if the moment came. Understand all this, Dr. Kaplan, and you have solved the real riddle of the universe. The incomprehensible working of the human heart. He left it until the afternoon of the second day before he went over to see Bob Bradford and tell him he could charter a plane and fly down to get his wife.

They hadn't spoken for some days; when Joe came in, Bradford asked him to sit down as if he were a stranger. He didn't offer him a drink or a cigarette. He looked quite grey round the temples and forehead, and the boyish, enthusiastic look, which gave him such attraction, had gone for ever.

‘Would you mind telling me why you've come here?' he said. ‘I thought I'd made it clear I didn't want to see you, not till I have Terese safe and home with me.'

‘That's why I came to see you,' Joe said. ‘Look. Bob, be reasonable; I want to help Terese as much as you do.'

‘Then call off your bloody murderers!' Bradford shouted at him. ‘Call them off till we find her! By Christ, Kaplan, if anything happens to her, I'll tear the roof off! I'll have you and every bastard tied up in this indicted for murder! And if you don't think I can do it, just try me.'

‘You can do anything you want,' Joe said quietly. ‘You're a very rich man, and you have friends in high places, I know. It just happens that she's safe and I know where she is; I came to tell you, that's all.'

Bradford swung on him; he was a big man and he gripped Kaplan's coat front and shook it. ‘Where is she? For Christ's sake, Joe, where is she?'

‘She's at Spokane, Washington State. At a motel on the U.S. 10 called Rock-a-Bye.'

‘And that bastard – that German? Joe, if he's hurt her.…'

‘He won't have, don't worry,' Kaplan said. ‘That's the last thing he'll do. He's giving himself up. Her safety was the deal. She'll be okay.'

‘You've got him, then?' Bradford had let go of the smaller man; he felt embarrassed by his loss of control. He had been tempted to shake him like a dog at one point. Kaplan looked at his watch. It was a quarter to five. ‘In another six hours, we will have,' he said. ‘It's timed for eleven.'

‘The murder,' Bradford said slowly.

‘The execution,' Joe answered him. ‘I thought you'd want to take a plane and fly down and be with your wife. That's what I came to tell you.'

‘Joe,' Bradford stepped in front of him. He looked lost, and miserable, ashamed. ‘Joe, she's going to need you too. I'm sorry for the way I've acted – for what I said just now. I'm going to bring her home, take care of her. I want her to forget all this – this bloody nightmare. Will you help me?'

Kaplan made a gesture; it brought his shoulders up and his arms out from his sides, the palms upwards. ‘Bob, Bob, let's sit down a minute, shall we? You go and charter your plane while I mix us both a drink.'

‘I have a plane standing by,' Bradford said. ‘Ever since she disappeared. I can be aboard in an hour.'

‘It'll take you seven or eight hours to fly out there,' Joe said. ‘If you get there before the time, things could go wrong. Our boys won't let anything stop them now. Sit down and have a drink and listen to me, Bob. For our old friendship's sake!'

‘What do you want to say,' Bradford said. ‘That I'm fooling myself? She wasn't kidnapped, she went with that sod of her own free will? Okay, I've had time to think, and I'll admit you're probably right. But she's sick, Joe; she's had some kind of breakdown.'

‘I don't think so,' Kaplan said. ‘I think it's much simpler than that, and much more complicated. I think she's just crazy in love, Bob. That's what you'll find when you get there. You won't find Terese as you imagine her. You'll find a woman who's just lost the man she loves. I'm trying to prepare you for something.

‘What?'

‘I don't think she'll come back with you,' Kaplan said it as gently as he could. ‘I don't think the old life will mean anything to her now. Not even gratitude to you. I don't think she'll come home now.'

‘I don't believe you,' Bradford said. He stood up. ‘I'm not listening to you any more, Joe. You've lost your sense of proportion over this. You get on and kill the guy, and leave Terese to me. We won't need your help after all. I'm going now. You can see yourself out.'

The Rock-a-Bye Motel was visible three miles down the highway; it flashed a neon sign in letters six feet high from the front, beckoning the night driver to a meal and a bed, the Washington State's best value for twelve-fifty. The black Chev drew in and turned down to the parking lot. Amstat helped Terese out and carried their suitcases. He did the checking in as usual and paid in advance for the night's lodging. A boy took them to cabin number eight, and opened the door for them.

‘You folks want something to eat? I take the orders now; diner shuts in twenty minutes.'

‘I'm hungry,' Terese said. ‘It's nine o'clock, darling. Let's order something. I'd like some sandwiches, ham on rye.'

‘Two ham on rye for the lady,' Amstat said. ‘And I'll have the same. And a bottle of whiskey.'

‘Fifteen minutes,' the boy said; he was a surly sixteen year old, with an acne pitted face and greasy fair hair. ‘You'll have to get it, mister; we're pretty packed out tonight.'

‘All right,' Amstat wasn't looking at him; he helped Terese out of her coat. ‘Fifteen minutes.'

It was a clean room with a pair of single beds covered in a garish red and green linen; it was much like all the other impersonal, slightly sleazy rooms they'd slept in since they left Boston; except for the two nights on the Lake. When they had eaten the sandwiches, which were slightly dry, and helped them down with whiskey and tap water, Terese reminded him of those two days.

‘You know, darling, I've been thinking. Ever since we talked about it. Are you sure Portugal is the right place for us to go?'

‘I don't know. Why not? Don't you want to go there?'

‘It's too near Europe,' she said; she had a habit of frowning and rubbing the frown with a forefinger when she was thinking. ‘I think we should stay in Canada; somewhere quiet. I've even looked up some place on the map; here, I'll show you.'

She got out the big travelling road map, and pointed out two small towns a hundred miles or so beyond the border. She put her arm round his neck and their faces touched as they locked together.

‘You mustn't practise architecture again,' she said. ‘They know about that. We'll have to live very quietly, in the sort of place where there's no Jewish community – a small country town. We could start a business, a store or something like that, with our money. I don't want to risk applying for a passport and trying to travel again. I don't believe Portugal is any safer than Argentina now.'

‘Nowhere is safe,' he said. He went on holding her; while she was talking and showing him the map, he kept his eyes closed. Canada, Portugal, Argentina. Nowhere was safe; it was after ten o'clock, they were probably outside the motel already, just to be sure he didn't try to change his mind. ‘If you want to stay in Canada, we'll stay in Canada,' he said. ‘Rapid Creek – that sounds a pleasant sort of place. We'll go there, my darling.'

‘You look tired,' she said; her voice was tender, and she touched his face, turning it to look at her. ‘Very tired. It's nearly over, Karl, don't you realise that? They haven't found us; they're not going to find us. One more day and we're into Canada and safe. We can begin our new life together. No more running away.' She kissed him.

‘No,' he said; he smiled at her; the human weakness passed and he no longer hesitated. ‘No more running for either of us. We'll have all our lives together. At Rapid Creek.'

‘Why don't we go to bed?' she said. ‘You've been driving for all these hours, and you look exhausted. Come, my darling. We've got tomorrow ahead of us.' She undressed first and climbed into the narrow bed; she watched him with her arms above her head; it made her look very young, and she was already so sleepy that her eyes were closing.

‘Why don't you get undressed? It's late.'

‘I know.' He came and stood beside the bed and looked at his watch. ‘It's eleven o'clock, Terese. I want a little air before I go to bed. You must be asleep when I get back. Promise me?'