Cut and Run (4 page)

A
young woman in a fresh white apron smiled across the counter in Catharina's Bake Shop at the tiny dark-haired woman. “May I help you?”

“Yes,” Rachel Stein said, only vaguely aware that in this place, her faded Dutch accent seemed right. “I'm here to see Catharina Peperkamp—Fall, I mean.” It was impossible to think of Catharina married, with a child. “Catharina Fall.”

“And who should I tell her is here?”

“Tell her Rachel.”

It would, she believed, be enough.

The waitress went back to the kitchen, and Rachel took a piece of broken butter cookie from a sample basket on the counter. For many years when she was young, she'd often been mistaken for a child, but now, with deep lines etched into her forehead and around her serious mouth and small, straight nose, people thought she was an old lady when she was only sixty-five. She'd gone from looking too young to looking too old. Her cab driver had offered to help her out of the taxi! She'd declined, of course, but thanked him lest he not offer his help the next time to someone who truly needed it. She supposed a face-lift would help, but although she could easily afford one, she refused even to investigate the procedure. In her opinion, people needed to see in her face, in its lines, what life had done to her. She believed that. But she kept herself well-groomed—her nails were always manicured, her hair perfectly styled—and she wore expensive, fashionable clothes. In that way, life had been good to her.

Within thirty seconds, Catharina Fall rushed out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, a panicked, uncertain look on her face. Rachel wished she could smile to reassure her. But she couldn't. A smile, now, would be a lie. Yet she wasn't surprised the impulse was there; everyone had always wanted to protect Catharina.

“My friend,” Rachel said quietly, holding on to her emotions, “you look wonderful.”

“Rachel.” Catharina put her fist to her mouth and held back a sob. “I don't believe it's you.”

She's going to throw me out, Rachel thought. She can't bear to see me. I'm a reminder. A shadow. As she is for me.

Instead Catharina burst from behind the counter and threw her arms around Rachel, crying, “My God, Rachel, oh, Rachel,” and Rachel found her own eyes filling with tears and her arms going around her strong, good friend. She'd missed her. Without realizing it, she'd missed her.

It had been more than forty years.

Catharina was sobbing openly, and the people around them were pretending not to notice. “I can't believe…I never thought I'd see you again.” She stood back and brushed away her tears without embarrassment; flour stuck to her nose and she tried to laugh. “Oh, Rachel.”

Rachel's throat was so tight it hurt. A sob would relieve the tension, but she blinked back her tears and refused to cry. She was a master at self-control. She hadn't expected Catharina to have this kind of impact on her. “My dear friend,” she said, squeezing Catharina's hand, then releasing it.
I must be strong.
“It's so good to see you. I heard about your shop, and I thought, while I'm in New York I'll have to stop and see you.”

Catharina had stopped crying and was shaking her head. “You know that's not true.”

Rachel had to smile, and some of the tightness in her throat eased. “Achh, I never could fool you. It's always been that way between us, hasn't it? You always know when I'm not telling the truth. Even after all these years. But come, let's pretend for a little while.”

“Rachel…”

There was fear in those deep green eyes. Rachel wished she hadn't seen it. “Please, Catharina.”

“All right.” Catharina nodded, but the fear didn't go away. “We'll have tea.”

“Wonderful.”

She pointed to a small table in the far corner. “There, go sit down. I'll bring a tray.”

Rachel quickly took her friend's hand. “Don't be afraid, Catharina.”

“I'll be all right. Now go sit down. I'll bring the tea.”

“As you wish. I'll wait for you.”

 

The big, open newsroom of the
Washington Gazette
was filled with the noise of bustling reporters, computers, typewriters, and telephones. Alice Feldon had been at her desk for two hours and had yet to sit down. She didn't mind. It was a sign things were hopping. What she did mind—what irritated the hell out of her—was that she couldn't find Matthew Stark. Again. She ignored the skinny, sorry-looking man who wanted to talk to Stark and scanned the newsroom. She had to squint her eyes because her glasses were on top of her head instead of on the bridge of her too-prominent nose. She was a large, lumpy-fleshed, big-boned woman, and she had no illusions about herself or the blue-collar tabloid she worked for. Last night, during a bout of insomnia, she'd painted her nails a shade of lavender she'd found on her daughter's shelf in the medicine cabinet.

“Where the hell's Stark?” she demanded of no one in particular.

A young reporter three desks away looked up nervously from his computer screen. A
Post
type if she'd ever seen one. His name was Aaron Ziegler, and he'd majored in journalism, which she considered a dumb thing for a reporter to have done. She'd hired him because he didn't show her any of the practice obituaries he'd done in class reporting. “He went for coffee,” Ziegler said. “Promised he'd be back in five minutes.”

“When was that, a half-hour ago?” Alice growled and glared at the skittish guy as if it was his fault she was stuck with a lazy shit like Matthew Stark. She should have fired him four years ago when she'd come in as the
Gazette
's metropolitan editor. He'd been occupying space for six months and hadn't done a damn thing that she could see. But he was a name, and the
Gazette
had precious few names. The boys upstairs had pressured her to give him a chance. She sighed at Ziegler. “Go find him, will you? Tell him he's got company.”

Ziegler was already on his feet. “Any name?”

The skinny guy sniffled, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Just tell him the Weaze is here.”

Alice wrinkled up her nose but didn't say a word. Ziegler hid his grin as he headed out of the newsroom. Like most everyone else at the
Gazette,
he was intimidated by Matthew Stark. Alice wasn't, although she couldn't understand why. Lazy or not, he was the scariest sonofabitch she'd ever known.

 

Catharina's hands shook as she poured tea from a white porcelain pot. She had prepared the tray of Darjeeling, little sandwiches, round scones, two pots of jam, and a plate of butter cookies herself. Rachel understood that her sudden appearance was a shock for Catharina. Forty years ago they'd said goodbye in Amsterdam, and Catharina, who stayed there a few more years, had cried and promised she would stay in touch. Rachel hadn't shed a tear or made a promise, because she had already cried a lifetime of tears and no longer believed in promises.

“Don't be nervous,” Rachel said kindly. She added sugar to her tea. They were strangers, she and Catharina. And yet, how could they ever be? “I haven't been to New York in so long. There's no other city quite like it, is there?”

“No, there isn't,” Catharina said. She added a drop of cream to her tea but didn't touch it.

“But how are you, Catharina?”

“Fine, I'm fine.”

“That's good.” Rachel concealed her own awkwardness as she tried some of the tea. “I can see why you opened a bakeshop. You were always a wonderful cook, and you took such pleasure in it. Nobody could make the meager rations we had in the war tolerable the way you did—and remember your beet stew?” Rachel laughed, not a happy, carefree laugh, but still a laugh. “It was ghastly, but much better than anything we'd had in weeks.” She was suddenly silent, observing Catharina's discomfiture with a small sigh. Did her old friend never think about the war? Rachel asked softly, “Adrian's a decent man?”

“Yes, wonderful.” Catharina seemed relieved at the switch in subject. “He's so kind and strong.”

“He's a banker?”

“Yes, and he loves it.”

“I'm glad. I've often wondered what would have happened to you if he hadn't come along when he did. Holland—” Rachel shrugged and thought perhaps it would be best not to dig any deeper than was strictly necessary. “You needed to get out of there. Wilhelmina would have suffocated you. Have you been back?”

“To Amsterdam, once, when Ann died. Johannes was inconsolable; I'd always hoped they'd die together.” She quickly picked up a scone, absently coating it with raspberry jam. “And to Rotterdam seven years ago, when my daughter made her Dutch premiere in the church in which Adrian and I were married. He didn't come—he and Willie have never gotten along, and their fighting would have spoiled everything.”

“Does she still think you'll come back?”

“Of course.”

Rachel nodded, remembering the tough, solid woman who was Catharina's senior by a dozen years and had been Rachel's closest friend. Wilhelmina Peperkamp had held the Nazis in the strongest contempt from the very beginning, long before Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, certainly long before the German occupation of The Netherlands. Rachel had never met anyone more reliable. “Yes, I can believe that.”

“Do you see her?”

With their five-year age difference, the friendship between Wilhelmina Peperkamp and Rachel Stein had been more a meeting of equals. Catharina had always been the baby. They'd all protected her—Wilhelmina, Johannes, Rachel, her brother Abraham. Everyone. They'd seemed to believe that if they could prevent the war from touching her, they could somehow preserve some of their own innocence. But the war had touched her. Nothing they could have done would have stopped that. It had robbed her of her youth, her girlhood. Rachel saw that now, understood, but she wondered if Catharina felt she'd failed them all.

“How can I see Willie?” Rachel said with a snort. “You know she doesn't travel, and I won't go back. She sends me cards at the holidays. She tells me about you, Juliana, her begonias.”

“Do you write to her?” Catharina asked.

“No, but of course that doesn't stop Willie from doing what she feels is right. If it did…” She lifted her small shoulders in a noncommittal shrug. “I don't know. Maybe then I would write. Catharina.” Rachel sighed, taking a tiny sandwich of smoked salmon. She wasn't hungry, but she knew she needed to eat. Five years of near starvation had developed in her a practical attitude toward food. “Do you have any idea why I'm here?”

“I can guess.”

“I've seen him,” Rachel said without further preamble. “I've seen Hendrik de Geer.”

Catharina shut her eyes and held her breath, and Rachel thought her old friend was going to faint. “Catharina?”

She opened her eyes. “I'm all right,” she said weakly. “I'm sorry.”

“Please, don't.”

“I'd convinced myself he was dead.”

“Hendrik dead?” Rachel hooted. “He'll outlive us all. He's blessed that way, you know—or cursed. Remember the time he brought us the chocolate? We'd had nothing but sugar beets to eat for days and Hendrik showed up with chocolate. I thought I'd never tasted anything so wonderful. He was so proud of himself, and we were too thrilled even to think to ask him where he'd gotten it. But you know Hendrik. He's the kind who picks up the world each morning and gives it a good shake. For once, Catharina, I want it to go the other way around. I want the world to give Hendrik de Geer a good shake.”

Catharina stared down at her tea, which had become cold, the cream filming on the top. She hadn't touched her scone. “Where did you see him?”

Rachel nibbled on a watercress sandwich. “On television, two weeks ago. It was fate, I think. Abraham and I have retired to Palm Beach.” Fleetingly, she thought of the last thirty years, during which she and her brother had become two of the savviest, toughest Hollywood agents. It seemed so distant now. The past, Amsterdam, seemed so much closer. “I never liked Los Angeles, I don't know why. Anyway, now I have a whole new group of politicians to watch. I always watch politics, of course, since Hitler. One of our senators is Samuel Ryder—very handsome, charming, on the whole too conservative for me, but nothing I can't live with. One day I'm watching the local news, and a reporter catches Sam Ryder as his car pulls up to the curb and starts firing questions at him—you know how they will—about some controversial bill he's sponsoring, and sitting beside him is Hendrik de Geer. Hendrik! In a limousine with a United States senator.”

The bell at the door tinkled, and Rachel looked around, pausing as two young women entered the shop, loaded down with shopping bags. Rolls of bright Christmas wrapping paper poked out of one bag.

“You're certain?” Catharina asked.

“Absolutely. After all these years, do you think he's changed? No, he looks just as he did in Amsterdam. I knew immediately it was he. My stomach told me, before my brain.” She remembered how she'd run to the bathroom and vomited. That was something she would never admit to Catharina, for whom, she felt, she must remain especially strong. “I called Ryder's office at once and demanded to know why he was riding around with Hendrik de Geer, and, of course, they thought I was crazy. But I persisted, and finally they put the senator on.”