There Fell a Shadow (29 page)

Authors: Andrew Klavan

BOOK: There Fell a Shadow

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“I trust,” said Lester Paul, “that your acquaintance with someone so â¦ unsavory as myself didn't contribute to your problems. With Miss Burke, I mean.” He gave me his half-mocking smile. It looked strangely cosmopolitan on the young army recruit.

I tossed my cigarette to the floor. The butt lay smoking amid a dozen dead ones. “Don't flatter yourself,” I said.

We both stopped walking at once. We faced each other. Paul swept his cap off, tucked it under his arm. “You know, Wells,” he said. His midwestern twang was gone suddenly. I heard that trace of an accent in his voice again. Was it German? I wasn't sure. “You know, you are a very smart man. My question is: how smart?”

“Just smart enough not to be dumb,” I said.

“Your stories in the newspaper were quite good, as I say, but it seemed to me that they were stories without a beginning. It seemed to me that when last we met, you neglected to ask me the one question that should have troubled you most of all.”

I nodded. “It slipped my mind in all the excitement.”

“Or perhaps you did not want to know the answer.”

“Yeah, perhaps,” I said. “Anyway, that's why I'm here now.”

He cocked an eyebrow at me, waiting.

“Why did you come to the Press Club, Paul?” I asked him. “What the hell were you doing there that night Colt came in? It couldn't have been coincidence?”

He laughed. “Smart enough. For a while I was afraid I had overestimated you.” He reached up and stroked his acne-covered cheeks with his fingers. It was a gentle motion: an actor checking his makeup. Satisfied, he looked out through the window at the runway. He sighed. “No, it was not coincidence. I was there because my sources had told me that Tim Colt would be passing through New York. And, on arriving, I learned that the Press Club was one of his favorite taverns.”

“You were looking for him, then.”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

“Because she's alive.”

It was the answer I was waiting for. The minute he said it, my pulse rose and pounded. I fought it down again. I shot a new cigarette into my mouth, stalling. I raised a match to it. “Go ahead,” I said from behind the flame.

Paul didn't turn from the window. “It's just a rumor,” he said. “But I've heard it more than once.”

I waved out my match. I let out a deep breath of smoke. “And you believe it.”

His shoulders lifted. “I maintain an open mind.”

“Okay. What's the source?”

“Several weeks ago, I had reason to be in Lebanon,” he said. “My business took me there. I had dealings with certain â¦ political groups â¦ and I heard them discussing â¦”

I tossed the match away. I watched it arc through the air, fall amid the litter on the floor.

“A woman,” Paul said.

I gazed at the match where it lay. I said nothing.

“They say she is running an underground railway,” Paul went on. “An escape route for Muslim and Christians alike â¦” He turned from the window. His voice became low, tense, urgent. “An escape route for both sides, Wells. Do you understand me? For all sides â¦ And something else.”

I looked up into his sunken eyes. They bore into me, sharp, intense.

Paul said: “I heard them talk about a love affair she'd had with a Western reporter. They said it happened in Beirut, but still â¦”

“Come on, Paul,” I said. “She loved him. She loved Colt. I saw her letter to him. If she were alive, she'd have found him. Hell, he'd have found her. Somehow, they'dâ”

“She's disfigured.”

I stopped. “What?”

“They say she was kidnapped at some point by a renegade group of terrorists, but maybe â¦ maybe it happened after she was captured in Sentu. At any rate, according to the story, she was raped, tortured. Her face and body mutilated. They say when they let her go, she felt too â¦ ashamed â¦” Sweat beaded on Paul's forehead. He cursed, dropped his cigarette, ground it out beneath his heel. He set his cap back on his head, fixed it at a jaunty angle. With an effort, he gave me a wan smile. “I came back,” he said more slowly, “because I felt I owed Colt that much. After I abandoned her at Jacobo, I felt the least I could do was to tell him this. But when I saw him in the Press Club that night, I realized that if I told him face-to-face â¦ well, it might have been an uncomfortable situation. I decided to wait outside and trail him to his hotel. I would have called him there â¦ if I had gotten out before he saw me.”

We looked at each other for a long time. “Or maybe you just balked at the thought of giving her back to him.”

His smile widened. “Yeah, perhaps,” he said in his flat American twang again. He stopped smiling. “You don't believe it, do you? You don't believe it is possible?”

My lips parted. I thought of Chandler Burke. I thought of the sound of her silence on the other end of the phone line. Already, I realized, that silence was beginning to seem more real to me than Eleanora. I began to speak.

But Paul raised a finger at me. He cocked his head, listening. A voice over the loudspeaker announced a flight to Israel.

“Ah,” he said. “A pity.” He stuck his hand out to me. “I must go.”

I stared at the hand a second, surprised. Then I took hold of it, shook it. “You're going back,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “I am going back.”

“Paul â¦”

“I have business there.”

I let his hand drop away. “Business,” I said.

“It is risky business, I suppose. But it is my business now.” He studied me for a second as passengers hurried by on either side of us. “You know, I would not consider it an imposition if â¦ if you wished to come along? In a free market, there is always room for competition.”

I looked into his eyes. I saw the ghosts in there that haunted him. “Thanks,” I said quietly. “But I have business here. I have business in the city.”

“Of course. Well â¦”

“Good luck, Paul.”

“Good-bye, my friend.”

He turned and started walking toward the gates. But then he turned again and faced me, walking backward. He forced a smile. He called to me: “But you do believe the enterprise is possible? Don't you?”

“Anything is possible,” I lied.

He seemed reassured. He waved. He turned once more, still walking. I watched him go through the security check. Then I headed for the door in the opposite direction.

It was still early. Three-thirty or so. I still had time to get some work done. I was doing a story about the city finance department. I had a line on an assessor who might be taking big-time bribes.

I was grateful for that story. Grateful it was waiting for me. It meant I didn't have to think about going home for a while. It meant I didn't have to think about the empty apartment with the lights from the movie marquee glaring through the window. Glaring on the pictures that hid the cracks on the wall.

The terminal's electric doors slid open. I stepped outside. I tossed my cigarette into a puddle and started walking for my car. I flipped up the collar of my overcoat. I stuck my hands in my pockets. I eyed the sky and cursed.

The rain was beginning to turn to snow. It was going to be a long drive back to the city.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

cover design by Jason Gabbert

This edition published in 2011 by
MysteriousPress.com
/Open Road Integrated Media

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