Classic Spy Novels 3-Book Bundle (131 page)

“Looking back, maybe inevitable.”

“Yes, sooner or later. This type of man lives on borrowed time.”

“The people responsible,” Morath said, “are perhaps in Moscow.”

A certain delicacy prevented Balki from saying what he felt about that, but the reaction—Balki looked around to see who might be listening—was clear to Morath.

“I wouldn’t even try to talk to them, if I were you,” Balki said.

“Well, if I thought it would help.”

“Once they do it, it’s done,” Balki said. “Fated is fated, Slavs know all about that.”

“I was wondering,” Morath said. “What’s become of Silvana?”

“Living high.” Balki was clearly relieved to be off the subject of Moscow. “That’s what I hear.”

“I want to talk to Von Schleben.”

“Well . . .”

“Can you do it?”

“Silvana, yes. The rest is up to you.”

Then, the last week in May, Morath received a letter, on thick, creamy paper, from one Auguste Thien, summoning him to the Thien law offices in Geneva “to settle matters pertaining to the estate of Count Janos von Polanyi de Nemeszvar.”

Morath took the train down from Paris, staring out at the green and gold Burgundian countryside, staying at a silent Geneva hotel that night, and arriving at the office, which looked out over Lac Leman, the following morning.

The lawyer Thien, when Morath was ushered into his office by a junior member of the staff, turned out to be an ancient bag of bones held upright only by means of a stiff, iron-colored suit. He had a full head of wavy silver hair, parted in the middle, and skin like parchment. “Your excellency,” the lawyer said, offering his hand. “Will you take a coffee? Something stronger?”

Morath took the coffee, which produced the junior member carrying a Sèvres service, countless pieces of it, on an immense tray. Thien himself served the coffee, his breathing audible as he worked.

“There,” he said, when Morath at last had the cup in his hands.

On the desk, a metal box of the kind used in safe-deposit vaults. “These papers comprise a significant proportion of the Polanyi de Nemeszvar estate,” Thien said, “which, according to my instructions, now, in substance, pass to you. There are provisions made for Count Polanyi’s surviving family, very generous provisions, but the greatest part of the estate is, as of this date, yours. Including, of course, the title, which descends to the eldest surviving member of the male line—in this case the son of Count Polanyi’s sister, your mother. So, before we proceed to more technical matters, it is my privilege to greet you, even in a sad hour, as Nicholas, Count Morath.”

Slowly, he stood and came around the desk to shake Morath’s hand.

“Perhaps I’m ignorant of the law,” Morath said, when he’d sat back down, “but there is, to my knowledge, no death certificate.”

“No, there is not.” A cloud crossed Thien’s face. “But our instructions preclude the necessity for certification. You should be aware that certain individuals, in their determination of a final distribution of assets, may presuppose, well, any condition they choose. It is, at least in Switzerland, entirely at their discretion. We are in receipt of a letter from the Paris
préfecture,
an
attestation,
which certifies, to our satisfaction, that the legator has been officially declared a missing person. This unhappy eventuality was, in fact, foreseen. And this office, I will say, is known for the most scrupulous adherence to a client’s direction—no matter what it might entail. You have perhaps heard of Loulou the circus elephant? No? Well, she now lives in splendid retirement, on a farm near Coimbra, in compliance with the wishes of the late Senhor Alvares, former owner of the Circus Alvares. In his last will and testament, he did not forget this good-natured beast. And she will, one might say, never forget Senhor Alvares. And this law firm, Count Morath, will never forget Loulou.”

The lawyer Thien smiled with satisfaction, took from his drawer a substantial key, opened the metal box, and began to hand Morath various deeds and certificates.

He was, he learned, very rich. He’d known about it, in a general way—the Canadian railroad bonds, the estates in Slovakia, but here it was in reality. “In addition,” Thien said, “there are certain specified accounts held in banks in this city that will now come into your possession—my associate will guide you in completing the forms. You may elect to have these funds administered by any institution you choose, or they can remain where they are, in your name, with payment instructions according to your wishes.

“This is, Count Morath, a lot to absorb in a single meeting. Are there, at present, any points you would care to have clarified?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“Then, with your permission, I will add this.”

He took from his drawer a sheet of stationery and read aloud. “ ‘A man’s departure from his familiar world may be inevitable, but his spirit lives on, in the deeds and actions of those who remain, in the memories of those left behind, his friends and family, whose lives may reflect the lessons they have learned from him, and that shall become his truest legacy.’ ”

After a pause, Thien said, “I believe you should find comfort in those words, your excellency.”

“Certainly I do,” Morath said.

Bastard. You’re alive.

On his return to Paris there was, of course, an ascension-to-the-title party, attended, as it happened, solely by the count and the countess presumptive. The latter provided, from the patisserie on the corner, a handsome cake, on top of which, in consultation with the baker’s wife and aided by a dictionary, a congratulatory phrase in Hungarian was rendered in blue icing. This turned out to be, when Morath read it, something like
Good Feelings Mister Count,
but, given the difficulty of the language, close enough. In addition—shades of Suzette!—Mary Day had pinned paper streamers to the wall of the apartment, though, unlike Jack the handsome sailor, Morath had not been there to steady the ladder. Still, he saw far more than Jack was ever going to and got to lick frosting off the countess’s nipples in the bargain.

There followed a night of adventure. At three, they stood at the window and saw the moon in a mist. Across the rue Guisarde, a man in an undershirt leaned on his windowsill and smoked a pipe. A spring wind, an hour later, and the scent of fields in the countryside. They decided they would go to the Closerie de Lilas at dawn and drink champagne, then she fell asleep, hair plastered to her forehead, mouth open, sleeping so peacefully he didn’t have the heart to wake her.

They went to the movies that night, at one of the fancy Gaumont theatres over by the Grand Hotel.
The loveliest fluff,
Morath thought. A French obsession—how passion played itself out into romantic intrigue, with everybody pretty and well dressed. His beloved Mary Day, hardheaded as could be in so many ways, caved in completely. He could feel it, sitting next to her, how her heart beat for a stolen embrace.

But in the lobby on the way out, all chandeliers and cherubs, he heard a young man say to his girlfriend, “
Tout Paris
can fuck itself blue in the face, it won’t stop Hitler for a minute.”

Thus the Parisian mood that June. Edgy but resilient, it fought to recover from the cataclysms—Austria, Munich, Prague—and tried to work its way back to normalcy. But the Nazis wouldn’t leave it alone. Now there was Danzig, with the Poles giving as good as they got. Every morning it lay waiting in the newspapers: customs officers shot, post offices burned, flags pulled down and stomped into the dirt.

And not all that much better in Hungary. Quieter, maybe. The parliament had passed new anti-Semitic laws in May, and when Morath was solicited by Voyschinkowsky for a subscription to a fund for Jews leaving the country, he wrote out a check that startled even “the Lion of the Bourse.” Voyschinkowsky raised his eyebrows when he saw the number. “Well, this is
terribly
generous of you, Nicholas. Are you sure you want to do all that much?”

He was. He’d had a letter from his sister. Life in Budapest, Teresa said, was “spoiled, ruined.” All the talk of war, suicides, an incident during a performance of
Der Rosenkavalier.
“Nicholas, even at the
opera.
” Duchazy was up to “God only knows what.” Plots, conspiracies. “Last Tuesday, the phone rang twice after midnight.”

He took Mary Day to afternoon tea at the baroness Frei’s house, the official celebration of summer’s arrival in the garden. The stars of the show were two roses that spread across the brick walls that enclosed the terrace: Madame Alfred Carrière, white flowers touched with pale pink—“a perfect noisette,” the baroness told Mary Day, “planted by the baron with his own hands in 1911”—and Gloire de Dijon, soft yellow with tones of apricot.

The baroness held court in an ironwork garden chair, scolding the vizslas as they agitated for forbidden morsels from the guests and beckoning her friends to her side. Seated next to her was an American woman called Blanche. She was the wife of the cellist Kolovitzky, a vivid blonde with black eyebrows, tanned skin from a life spent by Hollywood pools, and an imposing bosom on a body that should have been Rubenesque but was forced to live on grapefruit and toast.

“Darling Nicholas,” the baroness called out to him. “Come and talk to us.”

As he headed toward her, he saw Bolthos in the crowd and acknowledged his glance with a friendly nod. He was, for a moment, tempted to say something of his suspicions but immediately thought better of it.
Silence,
he told himself.

Morath kissed Lillian Frei on both cheeks. “Nicholas, have you met Blanche? Bela’s wife?”

“That’s Kolovitzky, not Lugosi,” the woman said with a laugh.

Morath laughed politely along with her as he took her hand. Why was this funny?

“At the Christmas party,” Morath said. “Is good to see you again.”

“She was at the Crillon,” Baroness Frei said. “But I made her come and stay with me.”

Kolovitzky’s wife started to talk to Morath in English, while Morath tried to follow along as best he could. The baroness saw that he was lost and began to translate into Hungarian, holding Blanche’s right hand tightly in her left and moving both hands up and down for emphasis as the conversation continued.

This was, Morath saw right away, a bad, potentially fatal, case of money madness. On the death of an aunt in Johannesburg, the cellist who scored Hollywood films had inherited two apartment houses in Vienna. “Nothing fancy, you know, but solid. Respectable.”

Kolovitzky’s friends, his lawyer, and his wife had all laughed at the absurdity of Kolovitzky going back to Austria to claim the inheritance. Kolovitzky laughed right along with them, then flew to Paris and took a train to Vienna.

“He was poor as a child,” Blanche said. “So money is never enough for him. He goes around the house and turns off the lights.”

She paused, found a handkerchief in her purse, and dabbed at her eyes. “Excuse me,” she said. “He went to Vienna three weeks ago, he’s still there. They won’t let him out.”

“Did someone encourage him to come?”

“See? He knows,” Blanche said to the baroness. “A scoundrel, a lawyer in Vienna. ‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ he said in his letter. ‘You’re an American, it won’t be a problem.’ ”

“He’s a citizen?”

“He’s got papers as a resident alien. I had a letter from him, at the Crillon, and the story was that once he gave them the buildings—that lawyer’s in cahoots with the Nazis,
that’s
what’s going on—he thought they’d let him go home. But maybe it isn’t so simple.”

The baroness stopped dead on
cahoots,
and Blanche said, “I mean, they’re all in it together.”

“Did he go to the American embassy?”

“He tried. But they don’t interest themselves in Jews. Come back in July, they told him.”

“Where is he, in Vienna.”

She opened her purse and brought out a much-folded letter on thin paper. “He says here,” she hunted for her glasses and put them on, “says here, the Schoenhof. Why I don’t know—he was at the Graben, which he always liked.” She read further and said, “Here. He says, ‘I have put the buildings, for tax purposes, in Herr Kreml’s name.’ That’s the lawyer. ‘But they tell me that further payments may be required.’ Then he says, ‘I can only hope it will be acceptable, but please speak with Mr. R. L. Stevenson at the bank and see what can be done.’ That too is odd, because there is no Mr. Stevenson, not that I know about.”

“They won’t let him out,” the baroness said.

“May I have the letter?” Morath said.

Blanche handed it to him, and he put it in his pocket.

“Should I send money?”

Morath thought it over. “Write and ask him how much he needs and when he’ll be coming home. Then say that you’re annoyed, or show it, with how he’s always getting into trouble. Why can’t he learn to respect the rules? The point is, you’ll bribe, but the bribe has to work, and you’ll say later that it was all his fault. They’re sensitive about America, the Nazis, they don’t want stories in the newspapers.”

“Nicholas,” the baroness said. “Can anything be done?”

Morath nodded. “Maybe. Let me think it over.”

The baroness Frei looked up at him, eyes blue as the autumn sky.

Blanche started to thank him, and had already said too much and was about to mention money when the baroness intervened.

“He knows, darling, he knows,” she said gently. “He has a good heart, Count Nicholas.”

*

Seen from a private box in the grandstand, the lawns of Longchamps racetrack glowed like green velvet. The jockeys’ silks were bright in the sunshine, scarlet and gold and royal blue. Silvana tapped the end of a pencil against a racing form. “Coup de Tonnerre?” she said. Thunderbolt. “Was that the gray one with the long tail? Horst? Do you remember?”

“I think it was,” Von Schleben said, peering at the program. “Pierre Lavard is riding, and they let him win once a day.” He read further. “Or maybe Bal Masqué. Who do you like, Morath?”

Silvana looked at him expectantly. She wore a print silk dress and pearls, her hair now expensively styled.