Shibumi (6 page)

The heat stewed a heady medley of aroma: the soprano of wild-flower, the mezzotones of cut grass and fresh sheep droppings, the insistent basso profundo of softened tar.

Insulated by fatigue from the sights and smells around her, Hannah plodded along, her head down and her concentration absorbed in watching the toes of her hiking boots. Her mind, recoiling from the sensory overload of the last ten hours, was finding haven in a tunnel-vision of the consciousness. She did not dare to think, to imagine, to remember; because looming out there, just beyond the edges of here-and-now, were visions that would damage her, if she let them in. Don’t think. Just walk, and watch the toes of your boots. It is all about getting to the Château d’Etchebar. It is all about contacting Nicholai Hel. There is nothing before or beyond that.

She came to a forking in the road and stopped. To the right, the way rose steeply toward the hilltop village of Etchebar, and beyond the huddle of stone and
crepi
houses she could see the wide mansard facade of what must be the château peeking between tall pine trees and surrounded by a high stone wall.

She sighed deeply and trudged on, her fatigue blending with protective emotional neurasthenia. If she could just make the château… just get to Nicholai Hel…

Two peasant women in black dresses paused in their gossip over a low stone wall and watched the outlander girl with open curiosity and mistrust. Where was she going, this hussy showing her legs? Toward the château? Ah well, that explained it. All sorts of strange people go to the château ever since that foreigner bought it! Not that M. Hel was a bad man. Indeed, their husbands had told them he was much admired by the Basque freedom movement. But still… he was a newcomer. No use denying it. He had lived in the château only fourteen years, while everyone else in the village (ninety-three souls) could find his name on dozens of gravestones around the church, sometimes newly cut into pyrenean granite, sometimes barely legible on ancient stone scrubbed smooth by five centuries of rain and wind. Look! The hussy has not even bound her breasts! She wants men to look at her, that’s what it is! She will have a nameless child if she is not careful! Who would marry her then? She will end up cutting vegetables and scrubbing floors in the household of her sister. And her sister’s husband will pester her when he is drunk! And one day, when the sister is too far along with child to be able to do it, this one will succumb to the husband! Probably in the barn. It always happens so. And the sister will find out, and she will drive this one from the house! Where will she go then? She will become a whore in Bayonne, that’s what!

A third woman joined the two. Who is that girl showing her legs? We know nothing about her—except that she is a whore from Bayonne. And not even Basque! Do you think she might be a Protestant? Oh no, I wouldn’t go that far. Just a poor
putain
who has slept with the husband of her sister. It is what always happens, if you go about with your breasts unbound.

True, true.

As she passed, Hannah looked up and noticed the three women.
“Bonjour, mesdames,”
she said.

“Bonjour, mademoiselle,”
they chanted together, smiling in the open Basque way. “You are giving yourself a walk?” one asked.

“Yes, Madame.”

“That’s nice. You are lucky to have the leisure.”

An elbow nudged, and was nudged back. It was daring and clever to come so close to saying it.

“You are looking for the château, Mademoiselle?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Just keep going as you are, and you will find what you’re looking for.”

A nudge; another nudge. It was dangerous, but deliciously witty, to come so close to saying it.

Hannah stood before the heavy iron gates. There was no one in sight, and there did not seem to be any way of ringing or knocking. The château was set back a hundred meters, up a long curving allée of trees. Uncertain, she decided to try one of the smaller gates down the road, when a voice behind her asked in a singsong, “Mademoiselle?”

She returned to the gate where an old gardener in blue working apron was peering out from the other side of the barrier. “I am looking for M. Hel,” she explained.

“Yes,” the gardener said, with that inhaled
“oui”
that can mean almost anything, except yes. He told her to wait there, and he disappeared into the curving row of trees. A minute later she heard the hinges creak on one of the side gates, and he beckoned her with a rolling arm and a deep bow that almost cost him his balance. As she passed him, she realized that he was half-drunk. In fact, Pierre was never drunk. Also, he was never sober. The regular spacing of his daily twelve glasses of red protected him from either of those excesses.

Pierre pointed the way, but did not accompany her to the house; he returned to trimming the box hedges that formed a labyrinth. He never worked in haste, and he never avoided work, his day punctuated, refreshed, and blurred by his glass of red every half hour or so.

Hannah could hear the clip-clip-clip of his shears, the sound receding as she walked up the allée between tall blue-green cedars, the drooping branches of which wept and undulated, brushing the shadows with long kelplike sweeps. A susurrant wind hissed high in the trees like tide over sand, and the dense shade was chill. She shivered. She was dizzy after the long hot walk, having taken nothing but coffee all day long. Her emotions had been frozen by fear, then melted by despair. Frozen, then melted. Her hold on reality was slipping.

When she reached the foot of a double rank of marble steps ascending to the terraces, she stopped, uncertain which way to go.

“May I help you?” a woman’s voice asked from above.

Hannah shaded her eyes and looked up toward the sunny terrace. “Hello. I am Hannah Stern.”

“Well, come up, Hannah Stern.” With the sunlight behind the woman, Hannah could not see her features, but from her dress and manner she seemed to be Oriental, although her voice, soft and modulated, belied the twittering stereotype of feminine Oriental speech. “We have one of those coincidences that are supposed to bring luck. My name is Hana—almost the same as yours. In Japanese,
hana
means flower. What does your Hannah mean? Perhaps, like so many Western names, it means nothing. How delightful of you to come just in time for tea.”

They shook hands in the French fashion, and Hannah was struck by the calm beauty of this woman, whose eyes seemed to regard her with a mixture of kindness and humor, and whose manner made Hannah feel oddly protected and at ease. As they walked together across the broad flagstone terrace toward the house with its classic facade of four
porte-fenêtres
flanking the main entrance, the woman selected the best bloom from the flowers she had been cutting and offered it to Hannah with a gesture as natural as it was pleasant. “I must put these in water,” she said. “Then we shall take our tea. You are a friend of Nicholai?”

“No, not really. My uncle was a friend of his.”

“And you are looking him up in passing. How thoughtful of you.” She opened the glass doors to a sunny reception room in the middle of which tea things were laid out on a low table before a marble fireplace with a brass screen. A door on the other side of the room clicked closed just as they entered. During the few days she was to spend at the Château d’Etchebar, all Hannah would ever see or hear of staff and servants would be doors that closed as she entered, or soft tiptoeing at the end of the hall, or the appearance of coffee or flowers on a bedside table. Meals were prepared in such a way that the mistress of the house could do the serving herself. It was an opportunity for her to show kindness and concern.

“Just leave your rucksack there in the corner, Hannah,” the woman said. “And would you be so good as to pour, while I arrange these flowers?”

With sunlight flooding in through the French windows, walls of light blue, moldings of gold leaf, furniture blending Louis XV and oriental inlays, threads of gray vapor twisting up from the teapot through a shaft of sunlight, mirrors everywhere lightening, reflecting, doubling and tripling everything; this room was not in the same world as that in which young men are shot down in airports. As she poured from a silver teapot into Limoges with a vaguely Chinese feeling, Hannah was overwhelmed by reality vertigo. Too much had happened in these last hours. She was afraid she was going to faint.

For no reason, she remembered feelings of dislocation like this when she was a child in school… it was summer, and she was bored, and there was the drone of study all around her. She had stared until objects became big/little. And she had asked herself, “Am I me? Am I here? Is this really me thinking these thoughts? Me? Me?”

And now, as she watched the graceful, economical movements of this slender Oriental woman stepping back to criticize the flower arrangement, then making a slight correction, Hannah tried desperately to find anchorage against the tide of confusion and fatigue that was tugging her away.

That’s odd, she thought. Of all that had happened that day: the horrible things in the airport, the dreamlike flight to Pau, the babbling suggestive talk of the drivers she had gotten rides from, that fool of a café-owner in Tardets, the long walk up the shimmering road to Etchebar… of all of it, the most profound image was her walk up the cedar-lined allée in subaqueous shadow… shivering in the dense shadow as the wind made sea sounds in the trees. It was another world. And odd.

Was it possible that she was sitting here, pouring tea into Limoges, probably looking quite the buffoon with her tight hiking shorts and clumsy, Vibram-cleated boots?

Was it just a few hours ago she had walked dazedly past the old man sitting on the floor of Rome International? “I’m sorry,” she had muttered to him stupidly.

“I’m sorry,” she said now, aloud. The beautiful woman had said something which had not penetrated the layers of thought and retreat.

The woman smiled as she sat beside her. “I was just saying it is a pity that Nicholai is not here. He’s been up in the mountains for several days, crawling about in those caves of his. Appalling hobby. But I expect him back this evening or tomorrow morning. And that will give you a chance to bathe and perhaps sleep a little. That would be nice, wouldn’t it.”

The thought of a hot bath and cool sheets was almost swooningly seductive to Hannah.

The woman smiled and drew her chair closer to the marble tea table. “How do you take your tea?” Her eyes were calm and frank. In shape, they were Oriental, but their color was hazel, semé of gold flecks. Hannah could not have guessed her race. Surely her movements were Eastern, fine and controlled; but her skin tone was café au lait, and the body within its high-collared Chinese dress of green silk had a distinctly African development of breast and buttocks. Her mouth and nose, however, were Caucasian. And her voice was cultured, low and modulated, as was her laugh when she said, “Yes, I know. It is confusing.”

“Pardon me?” Hannah said, embarrassed at having her thoughts read so transparently.

“I am what the kindly disposed call a ‘cosmopolitan,’ and others might term a mongrel. My mother was Japanese, and it would appear that my father was a mulatto American soldier. I never had the good fortune to meet him. Do you take milk?”

“What?”

“In your tea.” Hana smiled. “Are you more comfortable in English?” she asked in that language.

“Yes, in fact I am,” Hannah admitted also in English, but with an American tonality.

“I assumed as much from your accent. Good then. We shall speak in English. Nicholai seldom speaks English in the house, and I fear I am getting rusty.” She had, in fact, a just-perceptible accent; not a mispronunciation, but a slightly mechanical overenunciation of her British English. It was possible that her French also bore traces of accent, but Hannah, with her alien ear, could not know that.

But something else did occur to her. “There are two cups set out. Were you expecting me, Mrs. Hel?”

“Do call me Hana. Oh, yes, I was expecting you. The man from the café in Tardets telephoned for permission to give you directions. And I received another call when you passed through Abense-de-Haut, and another when you reached Lichans.” Hana laughed lightly. “Nicholai is very well protected here. You see, he has no great affection for surprises.”

“Oh, that reminds me. I have a note for you.” Hannah took from her pocket the folded note the café proprietor had given her.

Hana opened and glanced at it, then she laughed in her low, minor-key voice. “It is a bill. And very neatly itemized, too. Ah, these French. One franc for the telephone call. One franc for your coffee. And an additional one franc fifty—an estimate of the tip you would have left. My goodness, we have made a good bargain! We have the pleasure of your company for only three francs fifty.” She laughed and set the bill aside. Then she reached across and placed her warm, dry hand upon Hannah’s arm. “Young lady? I don’t think you realize that you are crying.”

“What?” Hannah put her hand to her cheek. It was wet with tears. My God, how long had she been crying? “I’m sorry. It’s just… This morning my friends were… I
must
see Mr. Hel!”

“I know, dear. I know. Now finish your tea. There is something in it to make you rest. Then I will show you up to your room, where you can bathe and sleep. And you will be fresh and beautiful when you meet Nicholai. Just leave your rucksack here. One of the girls will see to it.”

“I should explain—”

But Hana raised her hand. “You explain things to Nicholai when he comes. And he will tell me what he wants me to know.”

Hannah was still sniffling and feeling like a child as she followed Hana up the wide marble staircase that dominated the entrance hall. But she could feel a delicious peace spreading within her. Whatever was in the tea was softening the crust of her memories and floating them off to a distance. “You’re being very kind to me, Mrs. Hel,” she said sincerely.

Hana laughed softly. “Do call me Hana. After all, I am not Nicholai’s wife. I am his concubine.”

The elevator door opened silently, and Diamond preceded Miss Swivven into the white workspace of the Sixteenth Floor.

“…and I’ll want them available within ten minutes after call: Starr, the Deputy, and that Arab. Do you have that?”

“Yes, sir.” Miss Swivven went immediately to her cubicle to make the necessary arrangements, while the First Assistant rose from his console.

“I have the scan of Asa Stern’s first-generation contacts, sir. It’s coming in now.” He felt a justifiable pride. There were not ten men alive who had the skill to pull a list based upon amorphous emotional relationships out of Fat Boy.

“Give me a desk RP on it,” Diamond ordered as he sat in his swivel chair at the head of the conference table.

“Coming up. Oops! Just a second, sir. The list is one-hundred-eighty percent inverted. It will only take a moment to flip it.”

It was typical of the computer’s systemic inability to distinguish between love and hate, affection and blackmail, friendship and parasitism, that any list organized in terms of such emotional rubrics stood a 50/50 chance of coming in inverted. The First Assistant had foreseen this danger and had seeded the raw list with the names of Maurice Herzog and Heinrich Himmler (both H’s). When the printout showed Himmler to be greatly admired by Asa Stern, and Herzog to be detested, the First Assistant dared the assumption that Fat Boy had done a 180.

“It’s not just a naked list, is it?” Diamond asked.

“No, sir. I’ve requested pinhole data. Just the most salient facts attached to each name, so we can make useful identification.”

“You’re a goddamned genius, Llewellyn.”

The First Assistant nodded in absentminded agreement as he watched the list crawl up his screen in sans-serif IBM lettering.

STERN, DAVID

RELATIONSHIP EQUALS SON… WHITE CARD…

STUDENT, AMATEUR ATHLETE… KILLED, 1972 sub MUNICH OLYMPICS…

STERN, JUDITH

RELATIONSHIP EQUALS WIFE… PINK CARD…

SCHOLAR. RESEARCHER…

DEAD, 1956 sub NATURAL CAUSES…

ROTHMANN, MOISHE

RELATIONSHIP EQUALS FRIEND… WHITE CARD…

PHILOSOPHER, POET… DEAD, 1958 sub NATURAL CAUSES…

KAUFMANN, S. I.

RELATIONSHIP EQUALS FRIEND… RED CARD…

POLITICAL ACTIVIST… RETIRED…

HEL, NICHOLAI ALEXANDROVITCH

RELATIONSHIP EQUALS FRIEND…

“Stop!” Diamond ordered. “Freeze that!” The First Assistant scanned the next fragments of information. “Oh, my goodness!”

Diamond leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. When CIA screws up, they certainly do it in style! “Nicholai Hel,” Diamond pronounced, his voice a monotone.

“Sir?” the First Assistant said softly, recalling the ancient practice of executing the messenger who brings bad news. “This Nicholai Hel is identified with a
mauve
card.”

“I know… I know.”

“Ah… I suppose you’ll want a complete pull and printout on Hel, Nicholai Alexandrovitch?” the First Assistant asked, almost apologetically.

“Yes.” Diamond rose and walked to the big window beyond which the illuminated Washington Monument stood out against the night sky, while double rows of automobile headlights crawled down the long avenue toward the Center—the same automobiles that were always at the same place at this time every evening.

“You’ll find the pull surprisingly thin.”

“Thin, sir? On a mauve card?”

“On
this
mauve card, yes.”

Within the color-coding system, mauve punch cards indicated the most elusive and dangerous of men, from the Mother Company’s point of view: Those who operated without reference to nationalistic or ideological prejudices, free-lance agents and assassins who could not be controlled through pressure upon governments; those who killed for either side.

Originally, color-coding of punch cards was introduced into Fat Boy for the purpose of making immediately evident certain bold characteristics of a subject’s life and work. But from the very first. Fat Boy’s systemic inability to deal with abstractions and shadings reduced the value of the system. The problem lay in the fact that Fat Boy was permitted to color-code himself, in terms of certain input principles.

The first of these principles was that only such people as constituted real or potential threats to the Mother Company and the governments She controlled would be represented by color-coded cards, all others being identified by standard white cards. Another principle was that there be a symbolic relationship between the color of the card and the nature of the subject’s affiliations. This worked well enough in its simplest forms: Leftist agitators and terrorists were represented by red cards; Rightist politicians and activists received blue cards; sympathizers of the Left had pink cards; abettors of ultra-conservatives had powder blue. (For a brief time, devoted Liberals were assigned yellow cards, in concurrence with British political symbolism, but when the potential for effective action by Liberals was assessed by Fat Boy, they were reassigned white cards indicating political impotence.)

The value of color-coding came under criticism when the system was applied to more intricate problems. For instance, active supporters of the Provisional IRA and of the various Ulster defense organizations were randomly assigned green or orange cards, because Fat Boy’s review of the tactics, philosophy, and effectiveness of the two groups made them indistinguishable from one another.

Another major problem arose from Fat Boy’s mindless pursuit of logic in assigning colors. To differentiate between Chinese and European communist agents, the Chinese were assigned yellow cards; and the Europeans under their domination received a mixture of red and yellow, which produced for them orange cards, identical with those of the North Irish. Such random practices led to some troublesome errors, not the least of which was Fat Boy’s longstanding assumption that Tan Paisley was an Albanian.

The most dramatic error concerned African nationalists and American Black Power actives. With a certain racial logic, these subjects were assigned black cards. For several months these men were able to operate without observation or interference from the Mother Company and her governmental subsidiaries, for the simple reason that black print on black cards is rather difficult to read.

With considerable regret, it was decided to end the color-code method, despite the millions of dollars of American taxpayers’ money that had been devoted to the project.

But it is easier to introduce a system into Fat Boy than to cleanse it out, since His memory is eternal and His insistence on linear logic implacable. Therefore, color-coding remained in its vestigial form. Agents of the left were still identified with red and pink; while crypto-fascists, such as KKK members, were identified with blue, and American Legionnaires with powder blue. Logically enough, subjects who worked indifferently for both sides were identified with purple, but Fat Boy remembered His problem with Black Power actives, and so he grayed the purple down to mauve.

Further, Fat Boy reserved the mauve card for men who dealt specifically in assassination.

The First Assistant looked up quizzically from his console. “Ah… I don’t know what’s wrong, sir. Fat Boy is running statement/correction/statement/correction patterns. On even the most basic information, his various input sources disagree. We have ages for this Nicholai Hel ranging from forty-seven to fifty-two. And look at this! Under nationality we have a choice among Russian, German, Chinese, Japanese, French, and Costa Rican. Costa Rican, sir?”

“Those last two have to do with his passports; he holds passports from France and Costa Rica. Right now he lives in France—or he did recently. The other nationalities have to do with his genetic background, his place of birth, and his major cultural inputs.”

“So what is his real nationality?”

Mr. Diamond continued to look out the window, staring at nothing. “None.”

“You seem to know something about this person, sir.” The First Assistant’s tone was interrogative but tentative. He was curious, but he knew better than to be inquisitive.

For several moments, Diamond did not answer. Then: “Yes. I know something about him.” He fumed away from the window and sat heavily at his desk. “Get on with the search. Turn up everything you can. Most of it will be contradictory, vague, or inaccurate, but we need to know everything we can discover.”

“Then you feel that this Nicholai Hel is involved in this business?”

“With our luck? Probably.”

“In what way, sir?”

“I don’t know! Just get on with the search!”

“Yes, sir.” The First Assistant scanned the next fragments of data. “Ah… sir? We have three possible birthplaces for him.”

“Shanghai.”

“You’re sure of that, sir?”

“Yes!” Then, after a moment’s pause, “Reasonably sure, that is.”