Shibumi (38 page)

Hana disapproved of Hel’s ingracious tone, so she took control of the dinner talk as she brought Hannah’s plate to the sideboard to replenish it. “My English is imperfect. There is more than one asparagus here, but the word ‘asparaguses’ sounds awkward. Is it one of those odd Latin plurals, Nicholai? Does one say asperagae, or something like that?”

“One would say that only if he were that overinformed/undereducated type who attends concerti for celli and afterward orders cups of capuccini. Or, if he is American, dishes of raspberry Jell-I.”

“Arrêtes un peu et sois sage,”
Hana said with a slight shake of her head. She smiled at Hannah. “Isn’t he a bore on the subject of Americans? It’s a flaw in his personality. His sole flaw, he assures me. I’ve been wanting to ask you, Hannah, what did you read at university?”

“What did I read?”

“What did you major in,” Hel clarified.

“Oh. Sociology.”

He might have guessed it. Sociology, that descriptive pseudo-science that disguises its uncertainties in statistical mists as it battens on the narrow gap of information between psychology and anthropology. The kind of non-major that so many Americans use to justify their four-year intellectual vacations designed to prolong adolescence.

“What did you study in school?” Hannah asked her hostess thoughtlessly.

Hana smiled to herself. “Oh… informal psychology, anatomy, aesthetics—that sort of thing.”

Hannah applied herself to the asparagus, asking casually, “You two aren’t married, are you? I mean… you joked the other night about being Mr. Hel’s concubine.”

Hana’s eyes widened in rare astonishment. She was not accustomed to that inquisitive social gaucherie that Anglo-Saxon cultures mistake for admirable frankness. Hel opened his palm toward Hana, gesturing her to answer, his eyes wide with mischievous innocence.

“Well…” Hana said, “…in fact, Mr. Hel and I are not married. And in fact I am his concubine. Will you take dessert now? We have just received our first shipment of the magnificent cherries of Itxassou, of which the Basque are justly proud.”

Hel knew Hana was not going to get off that easily, and he grinned at her as Miss Stern pursued, “I don’t think you mean concubine. In English, concubine means someone who is hired for… well, for her sexual services. I think you mean ‘mistress.’ And even mistress is sort of old-fashioned. Nowadays people just say they are living together.”

Hana looked at Hel for help. He laughed and interceded for her. “Hana’s English is really quite good. She was only joking about the asparagus. She knows the difference among a mistress, a concubine, and a wife. A mistress is unsure of her wage, a wife has none; and they are both amateurs. Now, do try the cherries.”

Hel sat on a stone bench in the middle of the cutting gardens, his eyes closed and his face lifted to the sky. Although the mountain breeze was cool, the thin sunlight penetrated his
yukata
and made him warm and drowsy. He hovered on the delicious verge of napping until he intercepted the approaching aura of someone who was troubled and tense.

“Sit down, Miss Stern,” he said, without opening his eyes. “I must compliment you on the way you conducted yourself at lunch. Not once did you refer to your problems, seeming to sense that in this house we don’t bring the world to our table. To be truthful, I hadn’t expected such good form from you. Most people of your age and class are so wrapped up in themselves—so concerned with what they’re ‘into’—that they fail to realize that style and form are everything, and substance a passing myth.” He opened his eyes and smiled as he made a pallid effort to imitate the American accent: “It ain’t what you do, it’s how you do it.”

Hannah perched on the marble balustrade before him, her thighs flattened by her weight. She was barefoot, and she had not heeded his advice about changing into less revealing clothes. “You said we should talk some more?”

“Hm-m-m. Yes. But first let me apologize for my uncivil tone, both during our little chat and at lunch. I was angry and annoyed. I have been retired for almost two years now, Miss Stern. I am no longer in the profession of exterminating terrorists; I now devote myself to gardening, to caving, to listening to the grass grow, and to seeking a kind of deep peace I lost many years ago—lost because circumstances filled me with hate and fury. And then you come along with a legitimate claim to my assistance because of my debt to your uncle, and you threaten me with being pressed back into my profession of violence and fear. And fear is a good part of why I was annoyed with you. There is a certain amount of antichance in my work. No matter how well-trained one is, how careful, how coolheaded, the odds regularly build up over the years; and there comes a time when luck and antichance weigh heavily against you. It’s not that I’ve been lucky in my work—I mistrust luck—but I have never been greatly hampered by bad luck. So there’s a lot of bad luck out there waiting for its turn. I’ve tossed up the coin many times, and it has come down heads. There are more than twenty years’ worth of tails waiting their turn. So! What I wanted to explain was the reason I have been impolite to you. It’s fear mostly. And some annoyance. I’ve had time to consider now. I think I know what I should do. Fortunately, the proper action is also the safest.”

“Does that mean you don’t intend to help me?”

“On the contrary. I am going to help you by sending you home. My debt to your uncle extends to you, since he sent you to me; but it does not extend to any abstract notion of revenge or to any organization with which you are allied.”

She frowned and looked away, out toward the mountains. “Your view of the debt to my uncle is a convenient one for you.”

“So it turns out, yes.”

“But… my uncle gave the last years of his life to hunting down those killers, and it would make that all pretty pointless if I didn’t try to do something.”

“There’s nothing you can do. You lack the training, the skill, the organization. You didn’t even have a plan worthy of the name.”

“Yes, we did.”

He smiled, “All right. Let’s take a look at your plan. You said that the Black Septembrists were intending to hijack a plane from Heathrow. Presumably your group was going to hit them at that time. Were you going to take them on the plane, or before they boarded?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Avrim was the leader after Uncle Asa died. He told us no more than he thought we had to know, in case one of us was captured or something like that. But I don’t believe we were going to meet them on the plane. I think we were going to execute them in the terminal.”

“And when was this to take place?”

“The morning of the seventeenth.”

“That’s six days away. Why were you going to London so soon? Why expose yourself for six days?”

“We weren’t going to London. We were coming here. Uncle Asa knew we didn’t have much chance of success without him. He had hoped he would be strong enough to accompany us and lead us. The end came too fast for him.”

“So he sent you here? I don’t believe that.”

“He didn’t exactly send us here. He had mentioned you several times. He said that if we got into trouble we could come to you and you would help.”

“I’m sure he meant that I would help you get away after the event.”

She shrugged.

He sighed. “So you three youngsters were going to pick up your arms from your IRA contacts in London, loiter around town for six days, take a taxi out to Heathrow, stroll into the terminal, locate the targets in the waiting area, and blow them away. Was that your plan?”

Her jaw tightened, and she looked away. It did sound silly, put like that.

“So, Miss Stern, notwithstanding your disgust and horror over the incident at Rome International, it turns out that you were planning to be responsible for the same kind of messy business—a stand-up blow-away in a crowded waiting room. Children, old women, and bits thereof flying hither and yon as the dedicated young revolutionaries, eyes flashing and hair floating, shoot their way into history. Is that what you had in mind?”

“If you’re trying to say we are no different from those killers who murdered young athletes in Munich or who shot my comrades in Rome—!”

“The differences are obvious!
They
were well organized and professional!” He cut himself off short. “I’m sorry. Tell me this: what are your resources?”

“Resources?”

“Yes. Forgetting your IRA contacts—and I think we can safely forget them—what kind of resources were you relying on? Were the boys killed in Rome well trained?”

“Avrim was. I don’t think Chaim had ever been involved in this sort of thing before.”

“And money?”

“Money? Well, we were hoping to get some from you. We didn’t need all that much. We had hoped to stay here for a few days—talk to you and get advice and instructions. Then fly directly to London, arriving the day before the operation. All we needed was air fare and a little more.”

Hel closed his eyes. “My dear, dumb, lethal girl. If I were to undertake something like you people had in mind, it would cost between a hundred and a hundred-fifty-thousand dollars. And I am not speaking of my fee. That would be only the setup money. It costs a lot to get in, and often even more to get out. Your uncle knew that.” He looked out over the horizon line of mountain and sky. “I’m coming to realize that what he had put together was a suicide raid.”

“I don’t believe that! He would never lead us into suicide without telling us!”

“He probably didn’t intend to have you up front. Chances are he was going to use you three children as backups, hoping he could do the number himself, and you three would be able to walk away in the confusion. Then too…”

“Then too, what?”

“Well, we have to realize that he had been on drugs for a long time to manage his pain. Who knows what he was thinking; who knows how much he had left to think with toward the end?”

She drew up one knee and hugged it to her chest, revealing again her erubescence. She pressed her lips against her knee and stared over the top of it across the garden, “I don’t know what to do.”

Hel looked at her through half-closed eyes. Poor befuddled twit, seeking purpose and excitement in life, when her culture and background condemned her to mating with merchants and giving birth to advertising executives. She was frightened and confused, and not quite ready to give up her affair with danger and significance and return to a life of plans and possessions. “You really don’t have much choice. You’ll have to go home. I shall be delighted to pay your way.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You can’t do anything else.”

For a moment, she sucked lightly on her knee. “Mr. Hel—may I call you Nicholai?”

“Certainly not.”

“Mr. Hel. You’re telling me that you don’t intend to help me, is that it?”

“I am helping you when I tell you to go home.”

“And if I refuse to? What if I go ahead with this on my own?”

“You would fail—almost surely die.”

“I know that. The question is, could you let me try to do it alone? Would your sense of debt to my uncle allow you to do that?”

“You’re bluffing.”

“And if I’m not?”

Hel glanced away. It was just possible that this bourgeois muffin was dumb enough to drag him into it, or at least to make him decide how far loyalty and honor went. He was preparing to test her, and himself, when he felt an approaching presence he recognized as Pierre’s, and he turned to see the gardener shuffling toward them from the château.

“Good afternoon, ‘sieur, m’selle. It must be pleasant to have the leisure to sun oneself.” He drew a folded sheet of paper from the pocket of his blue worker’s smock and handed it to Hel with great solemnity, then he explained that he could not stay for there were a thousand things to be done, and he went on toward the garden and his gatehouse, for it was time to soften his day with another glass.

Hel read the note.

He folded it and tapped it against his lips. “It appears, Miss Stern, that we may not have all the freedom of option we thought. Three strangers have arrived in Tardets and are asking questions about me and, more significantly, about you. They are described as Englishmen or
Amérlos
—the village people wouldn’t be able to distinguish those accents. They were accompanied by French Special Police, who are being most cooperative.”

“But how could they know I am here?”

“A thousand ways. Your friends, the ones who were killed in Rome, did they have plane tickets on them?”

“I suppose so. In fact, yes. We each carried our own tickets. But they were not to here; they were to Pau.”

“That’s close enough. I am not completely unknown.” Hel shook his head at this additional evidence of amateurism. Professionals always buy tickets to points well past their real destinations, because reservations go into computers and are therefore available to government organizations and to the Mother Company.

“Who do you think the men are?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What are you going to do?”

He shrugged. “Invite them to dinner.”

After leaving Hannah, Hel sat for half an hour in his garden, watching the accumulation of heavy-bellied storm clouds around the shoulders of the mountains and considering the lie of the stones on the board. He came to two conclusions at about the same time. It would rain that night, and his wisest course would be to rush the enemy.

From the gun room he telephoned the Hôtel Dabadie where the Americans were staying. A certain amount of negotiation was required. The Dabadies would send the three
Amérlos
up to the château for dinner that evening, but there was the problem of the dinners they had prepared for their guests. After all, a hotel makes its money on its meals, not its rooms. Hel assured them that the only fair and proper course would be to include the uneaten dinners in their bill. It was, God knows, not the fault of the Dabadies that the strangers decided at the last moment to dine with M. Hel. Business is business. And considering that waste of food is abhorrent to God, perhaps it would be best if the Dabadies ate the dinners themselves, inviting the abbé to join them.