There Fell a Shadow (23 page)

I could picture them: a string of children punctuated by the adults who shepherded them, all of them silhouetted against the purple sky.

“More than once, we had to plaster ourselves against a wall as the soldiers rushed past, as they fired into the panicked crowds in their own panic. More than once, the cry of a toddler or the complaint of a child threatened to betray us. But in the end, we reached the gulf shore unmolested. The boat was there as planned, and the children were loaded aboard and taken out to the trawler. It took three trips to get them all. When the last child was gone, the boat came back one more time. For Colt and Eleanora.”

He paused. For dramatic effect, I guess. But I already knew what was coming. “She wouldn't go,” I said.

“She was shocked at the thought. There was still business to be done, she said. Documents, codes, other evidence that had to be destroyed. The lives of those who had risked everything to help her hung in the balance. She would not compromise their safety for her own. She sent the boat back empty.”

Despite the open window, the perfumed smell of Paul's cigarettes was now thick in the room. He lit another one. He waved it around.

“That was how she lived,” he said.

I nodded. I said nothing.

“Now,” said Paul, “I will tell you how she died.”

“T
his, I suppose, is the part of the story that concerns you most. That will explain my meeting with Colt in the Press Club the night before he was murdered.”

Paul now knocked the rest of his scotch back as if to brace himself. I did the same. Chandler, hands folded in her lap, just looked on.

“Colt, of course, begged her to go,” Paul said. “But she—she bowed her head quietly under the onslaught of his argument and would not budge from her position. In her simple, straightforward fashion, she explained that the final responsibility for this network belonged to her. She surely wanted to escape, but she would not leave disaster in her wake. If it had been another woman, I do believe Colt would have physically forced her into the boat. But that was not the sort of thing one did to Eleanora.

“Instead, we returned to the safe house by the same circuitous way we'd come. We made coffee and toasted the success of our mission. When we'd done, Eleanora went to a rolltop desk in the living room and opened it. When Robert Collins saw what was inside, he let out a long whistle of delight. He was looking at a ham radio.”

I shook my head. “So?”

“Well, by then, you see, the city was entirely cut off from the outside.”

“Yeah, Holloway told me about that.”

“Collins—who, as I say, was a serious and ambitious reporter—realized he was looking at what possibly was the last means of filing dispatches out of the city. That realization cost him his life.”

The smoke—all the smoke—drifted between us now. It was a single gray-yellow mass. I saw Paul floating in it where he sat as if from a distance. He seemed insubstantial, like a figure in a dream. Like the smoke, his voice drifted on.

“At any rate, Eleanora used the radio to contact one of her safe houses in Jacobo, a city nearby, a major center of her operations. She was told that the situation there was dire. Desperate refugees were gathering in the hopes she would appear, and no one else was left who could help them. She believed that if she could get through the rebel lines to Jacobo, she could give what aid there was to give and possibly arrange her own escape as well. Colt declared it was too dangerous. He demanded she let him get her out in the American airlift. But Eleanora was adamant. It was left finally to me to propose a more sensible …” Paul stopped. We exchanged a glance through the perfumed smoke. He smiled. “But there is no point in trying to deceive you, Wells, is there? The prospect of aiding Eleanora's escape, of acting as her hero, earning her gratitude and admiration—such a prospect was as appealing to me as it was to Colt. I suggested that, with my contacts on both sides of the affair, I could guide her safely and easily to Jacobo provided she had a passport under a false name. To my surprise, Eleanora had taken no precautions to secure her own escape from the country. She had no valid passport at all, and the conditions in the city being what they were, it would be difficult to procure one.

“So we hit upon an idea which allowed all of us to display our gallantry. Colt rendered up his identification papers, Collins photographed Eleanora, and I used my small talents to doctor Colt's passport to look like hers.”

“Which meant,” I said slowly, “that Colt couldn't travel with you. That only you and Collins could escort her to Jacobo.”

Paul laughed without much pleasure. “Collins was not interested in the enterprise. He had asked Eleanora—as payment for his help in rescuing the children—to allow him to use her radio to send out his dispatches on the fall of the capital. It was a stupid thing to do. A shell hit the house not long after we left, I'm told, and Collins was killed. None of his dispatches reached the public.”

The air from the open window chilled the back of my neck. It dried the sweat that had been running down my back, dampening my shirt. There was a chill inside me, too. My left hand clenched and unclenched. My right hand raised my cigarette to my lips again and again. The end of the story was near. I didn't want to hear it.

I didn't want her to die.

I stood up. Paul's voice ceased for a moment at the scraping of my chair. Chandler looked up at me, surprised. I felt embarrassed in front of her.

I turned my back on both of them. I stood at the window. I peered out on the bright lights of the movie theater below. I smoked. Paul went on. His voice had taken on a slightly mocking tone. He seemed to enjoy what I was feeling. Misery loves company.

“I don't have to explain to you,” he said, “how I felt as I watched Colt kiss her good-bye. As I watched her lay her head against his chest, whisper plans for their reunion. As I say, perhaps she had only been using him for the good he could do her network….”

“You know damn well she wouldn't have done that,” I said, without turning around.

“Perhaps,” was all Paul said in answer. “At any rate, we helped Eleanora destroy her papers, uproot her communication lines, give warnings to contacts, and so on. Then Colt went back to the heart of the city to join the airlift, Collins stayed behind, and Eleanora and I set off for Jacobo.”

He paused. I watched my reflection on the windowpane. I imagined her form floating in the night beyond it. I imagined her looking in on me as I looked out at her. Have pity, Eleanora, I thought, on those of us still stuck in the world.

“Travel is part of a trader's business,” Paul said. “I knew the ropes, as they say. Even under the circumstances, the trip to Jacobo was not eventful. We were stopped on the road no more than four times. Each time, my name—and, of course, my money—saw us through. However, the going was circuitous and slow. It took us three days to reach Jacobo. By the time we had, the capital had gone under. The nation belonged to the rebels. In Jacobo, rebels and rebel sympathizers had risen up and set the city on fire. We managed to reach Eleanora's safe house but found there a scene depressingly similar to the one we'd just finished with. Here, again, were the refugees, children and adults—about twenty of them—who'd made their way here in hopes of finding one last chance of escape. When they saw Eleanora, they were overjoyed. And the great woman set about the effort of getting them out of the country in small groups of two or three. One of the journalists you mentioned in your article—Donald Wexler—he helped with that.”

I turned sharply from the window. “He was there?”

“Yes.”

“He met Eleanora?”

“Why, yes. They spoke together for some time, in fact.”

“He never told me that,” I murmured.

“Ah, well, my friend,” said Paul in that mocking tone again, “she was not an easy woman to share.”

I nodded. “Go on,” I said. I watched him now through the smoke.

“Then again,” said Paul, “perhaps he was just too modest to tell you of his heroic exploits. As I recall, he had a jeep which he used to drive some of the refugees through enemy lines to safety. That was the last I saw of him. Soon after that, anyway, the end came….”

This time, when he paused, he stared sadly at his black cigarette case. Mournfully, he lifted a new butt to his lips.

I couldn't stand it anymore. “Why don't you tell it?” I said sharply. “Why don't you quit stalling, and tell the end?”

“John.” It was Chandler. She spoke quietly from her chair. I could hear the surprise and agitation in her voice. I didn't look at her.

Paul made a small bow her way. “No, no,” he said. “Your friend is quite right. I am too much enamored of melodrama. A lifelong weakness.”

“Just tell the story, Paul,” I said.

The smuggler pinned me with his sunken eyes. “They raided the house,” he said without expression. “Rebel soldiers. They descended on us out of nowhere one night, circled the place, calling her name, calling for Eleanora. I was in a bedroom upstairs at the time. She was in the room beside me. I could have gone to her, I could have tried to save her. I could have died defending her.” He gestured with his cigarette again. Now there was too much smoke everywhere to follow a single trail. “I made one of my … famous escapes,” Paul said. “Onto the roof, down a drainpipe … into the night. I turned back and saw the soldiers close in on the house. I heard the sound of splintering wood. I heard Eleanora call for me.”

“All right,” I said.

“And then I heard her scream.”

“Knock it off.”

“I heard her scream again and then again.”

Without thinking, I went at him. Hurling my cigarette to one side, I reached down and grabbed him by his jacket lapels.

Chandler leapt up. “John!” she cried.

I dragged the bastard to his feet. I pulled him up to me until we were nose to nose.

“What did you do?” I screamed into his face. “You son of a bitch, what the fuck did you do?”

Paul smiled sadly. Mockingly. “I left her there,” he said. “I left her there.”

For another moment, I held him. I peered in rage into that scarred, miserable face. I wanted to smash him. I wanted to knock him to the floor and beat him till he said it wasn't true. Till he admitted he'd gone back for her, saved her….

“I ran for my life,” he said, “and left her there to die.”

My clenched hands opened. Paul dropped back into his chair. His head sunk on his breast. I turned away. I wandered toward my desk. As I went, I came across the cigarette I had tossed away. It lay on the brown wood of the floor. The smoke drifted up from it in a thin stream. Beneath it a small circle of char began to spread.

I stepped on the cigarette. Ground it under the toe of my shoe. The smoke faltered, died.

I heard the door open and shut behind me. When I turned, Paul was gone.

I
stared at the dead cigarette. I ran my fingers up through
my hair. Chandler came up beside me.

“What is it?” she said. “What is going on? Tell me. I don't understand.”

I smiled at the floor. “Just another fun weekend with Wellsey,” I told her.

She put her hands on my shoulders. “Talk to me, John. You've locked me out for too long. This Eleanora—is she someone you knew?”

I looked up into her round, tired, serious face. Her eyes were still nervous, even fearful. But they were patient, too. She waited for me to come to her. My hands remembered the fullness of her flesh. How warm she was. I remembered how sweet she tasted, and all the passion in her.

When did you see her last, Wells?

Tim Colt had asked me that the night he died. But he was really asking me something else.
Do you love her? Do you love anyone? Do you know how to love? Have you ever loved the way I have? The way I love Eleanora? Do you think you ever will?

Suddenly, without thinking, I reached for Chandler. I gripped her by the shoulders. I pulled her to me. I kissed her, hard, and her mouth opened to let me in. My hands went over her, over her waist, her breasts, up to hold her face while I kissed her and kissed her.