The Eiger Sanction (7 page)

“Oh, I don't know. Came out of college after changing majors every year and tried to find a job as a Renaissance Woman, but there wasn't a heading like that in the want ads. And traveling around seemed like a possible thing to do. It also struck me as kind of fun to be the first black stewardess on the line—I was their public relationsNegress .” She pronounced the word prissily, ridiculing those who would use it. “How about you? How did you happen to become a college teacher?”

“Oh, I came out of college and tried to find a job as a Renaissance Man, but...”

“All right. Forget it.”

In the course of the chat, Jonathan discovered that she would be in New York for a three-day layover, and that pleased him. They drifted into another easy silence.

“What's funny?” she asked in response to his slight smile.

“Nothing,” he said. “Me.”

“Synonyms?”

“I just...” He smiled gently at her over the table. “It just occurred to me that I am not bothering to be clever with you. I usually make it a point to be clever.”

“How about all that Flugle Street business?”

“Hustler talk. Dazzle talk. But I don't think I'd care to dazzle you.”

She nodded and looked out the window, giving her attention to the random scatter of light where the rain danced on the puddles. After a while, she said, “That's nice.”

He knew what she meant. “Yes, it's nice. But it's a little disconcerting.”

She nodded again. And they both knew she meant that it was a little disconcerting for her, too.

A series of non-sequitur pivots brought them to the subject of houses, and Jonathan waxed enthusiastic about his own. For half an hour he described details to her, trying hard to make her see them. She listened actively, letting him know through small movements of her eyes and head that she understood and shared. When he stopped suddenly, realizing that he had been talking steadily and probably boorishly, she said, “It must be nice to feel that way about a house. And it's safe too, of course.”

“Safe?”

“A house can't lean on you emotionally. Can't burden you by loving you back. You know what I mean.”

He knew exactly, and he experienced a negative twinge at her emotional acumen. It occurred to him that he would enjoy having her at his home—passing a day sitting around and chatting. He told her so.

“It sounds like fun. But we couldn't go now. That wouldn't be good. I pick you up in a cab, we have dinner, then we run off to your house. Technically speaking, that would constitute a 'quickie.' It doesn't sound like our sort of thing.”

He agreed that it was not their sort of thing. “We could make some sort of pact. I imagine we're capable of not making love for a day or two.”

“You'd cheat.”

“Probably.”

“And if you didn't, I would.”

“I'm glad to hear that.”

The restaurant was closing, and their waiter had already made many polite intrusions with offers of unwanted service. Jonathan tipped rather too much, paying for the splendid time he had had, rather than for the service, which he had not noticed.

They decided to walk back to her hotel because it was not too far, and because the streets were empty and cool after the rain. They strolled, sharing swatches of talk and longer periods of silence. Her hand was in the bend of his arm, and she drew his attention to little things she noticed with a slight press of her fingers, which he acknowledged with a gentle return flex.

Surprisingly quickly they found themselves at her hotel. In the lobby they shook hands, then she said, “It is all right if I come out on the tram tomorrow morning? You can meet me at the station, and we'll take a look at this church of yours.”

“I think that would be... just fine.”

“Good night, Jonathan.”

“Good night.”

He walked to the train station, noticing along the way that the city seemed less ugly than usual. Probably the rain.

Later, down in the gallery, he screwed up his courage and tried again to work on the Lautrec article. He penciled a few notes, then the lead broke. That was it. Fate. He might have plowed on, wading through uninspired, mealy prose—but not if it entailed resharpening his pencil. It wasn't his fault that the pencil had broken.

On his desk top lay the blue pay envelope from Dragon, chubby with tenscore one-hundred-dollar bills. He picked it up and looked around for a safe place to put it. His eye caught none, so he dropped it back on the desk. For a man who went to such extremes to make money, Jonathan had none of the instincts of the miser. Money had no attraction for him. Goods, comforts, and possessions were another matter. It delighted him to remember that by tomorrow afternoon he would own the pointillist Pissarro. He looked around the walls, deciding where to hang it, and his eye fell on the Cezanne that Henri Baq had stolen for him in Budapest as a birthday present. Memories of Henri came to him: the curiously warped Basque wit... their laughter when they described close calls to each other... that staggering drunk in Arles when they had played at bullfighting with their jackets and the angry traffic. And he recalled the day Henri died, trying to hold his guts in with his hands, seeking a witty punch line to go out on, and not being able to come up with one.

Jonathan snapped his head to clear the images out, but no good. He sat at the pianoforte and chorded aimlessly. They had been a team—he and Henri and Miles Mellough. Miles worked for Search, Jonathan for Sanction, and Henri for the French counterpart of CII. They had performed assignments competently and quickly, and they always found time to sit around in bars, talking about art and sex and... whatever.

Then Miles set up Henri's death.

Jonathan slipped into a bit of Handel. Dragon had said that Miles was involved somehow in this sanction he was trying to force on Jonathan. For almost two years, Jonathan had anticipated the day when he could face Miles again.

Don't think about it. Jemima is coming.

He left the chamber, locking the door behind him, and strolled over the grounds to while away the slow-moving time before her arrival. The breeze was fresh, and the leaves of the plane trees lining the drive scintillated in the sun. Overhead, the sky was taut blue, but on the northern horizon over the water hovered a tight bundle of cloud that promised a fresh storm that night. Jonathan loved storms.

He wandered through the formal English garden with its newly clipped box hedges enclosing an involute maze. From the depths of the labyrinth he could hear the angry click! click! click! of Mr. Monk's trimming shears.

“Argh! There!” Click! “That'll teach you, you simpleminded shrub!” Click! Click! “OK, wise ass twig! Stick it out, and I'll cut it off for you! Like that!” Click!

Jonathan tried to locate the sound within the maze so he might avoid an encounter with Mr. Monk. Stealthily, he moved down the alley, rolling the pressure underfoot to reduce the sound.

“You got something against them other branches?” Mr. Monk's voice was honey sweet. “Oh-h-h, you don't like their company. Well, I understand. You're just some kind of loner, keepin' away from the bunch like that.” Then suddenly he roared, “Pride! That's your trouble! And I got a cure for pride!” Click! “There!”

Jonathan squatted beside the wall of hedge, not daring to move, uncertain of the direction of Mr. Monk's voice. There was a long silence. Then he. began to picture himself, cringing at the thought of meeting his groundsman. He smiled, shook his head, and stood up.

“What you doin', Dr. Hemlock?” Mr. Monk asked from directly behind him.

“Oh! Well! Hello.” Jonathan frowned and dug his toe into the turf. “This—ah—this grass here, Mr. Monk. I've been examining it. Looks funny to me. Don't you think so?”

Mr. Monk had not noticed, but he was always willing to believe the worst of growing things. “Funny in what way, Dr. Hemlock?”

“Well, it's... greener than usual. Greener than it ought to be. You know what I mean.”

Mr. Monk examined the area near the shrubbery, then compared it with nearby grass. “Is that right?”

His eyes grew round with rage as he turned on the offending patch.

Jonathan walked down the alley with determined casualness and turned at the first corner. As he paced more quickly to the house, he heard Mr. Monk's voice from within the labyrinth.

“You stupid weeds! Always screwing up! If you ain't brown and scruffy, you're too green! Well, this'll fix you!” Snip!

Jonathan drove along the tree-lined road to the station. The train would probably be late, in the Long Island tradition, but he could not run the risk of keeping Jemima waiting. His automobile was a vintage Avanti—a car consonant with his hedonistic lifestyle. It was in poor condition because he drove it hard and gave it little attention, but its line and grace appealed to him. When it finally broke down for good, he intended to use it as a planter on his front lawn.

He parked close to the platform, his bumper touching the gray, weathered planking. The warming sun liberated a smell of creosote from the wood. Because it was Sunday, the platform and the parking area were deserted. He leaned back in the seat and waited drowsily. He would never consider standing on a train platform to wait because...

...Henri Baq had bought his on the cement arrival dock of the Gare St. Lazare. Jonathan often thought of the steamy clangor of that vast steel-domed station. And of the monstrous grinning clown.

Henri had been off guard. An assignment had just ended, and he was going on his first vacation without his wife and children. Jonathan had promised to see him off, but he had been delayed in the tangle of traffic in the Place de L'Europe.

He caught sight of Henri, and they waved over the heads of the crowd. It must have been just then that the assailant slipped the knife into Henri's stomach. The dispatcher's voice boomed its undecipherable drone into the hiss of steam and rattle of baggage wagons. By the time Jonathan pushed his way through the throng, Henri was leaning against a huge poster for the Winter Circus.

“Qu'as-tu?”Jonathan asked.

Henri's drooping Basque eyes were infinitely sad. He clutched the front of his jacket with one hand, the fist pressed against his stomach. He smiled foolishly and shook his head with an I-don't-believe-it expression, then the smile contorted into a grin of pain, and he slid to a sitting posture, his feet straight out before him like a child's.

When Jonathan stood up after feeling Henri's throat for pulse, he came face to face with the insane grin of the clown on the poster.

Marie Baq had not wept. She thanked Jonathan for coming to tell her, and she gathered the children together in another room for a talk. When they came back, their eyes were red and puffy, but none of them was still crying. The eldest boy—also Henri—assumed his role and asked Jonathan if he would care for an aperitif. He accepted, and later he took them across the street to a cafe for supper. The youngest, who did not really understand what had happened, ate with excellent appetite, but no one else did. And once the eldest girl made a snorting noise as the dike of her control broke, and she ran to the ladies' room.

Jonathan sat up that night over coffee with Marie. They talked of practical and fiscal matters across the kitchen table covered with oilcloth from which daydreaming children had picked flecks of plastic. Then for a long time there was nothing to talk about. Close to dawn she pushed herself out of the chair with a sigh so deep it whimpered. “One must continue to live, Jonathan. For the little ones. Come. Come to bed with me.”

There is nothing so life-embracing as lovemaking. Potential suicides almost never do. Jonathan lived with the Baqs for two weeks, and each night Marie used him like medicine. One evening she said calmly, “You should go now, Jonathan. I don't think I need you anymore. And if we continued after I ceased to need you, that would be a different thing.”

He nodded.

When the youngest son heard that Jonathan was going away he was disappointed. He had intended to ask Jonathan to take him to the Winter Circus.

Several weeks later, Jonathan learned that Miles Mellough had set up the assassination. Because Miles left CII at the same time, Jonathan had never been sure which side had ordered the sanction.

“Nice job of meeting the train,” Jemima said looking in the window from the off-driver side.

He started. “I'm sorry. I didn't notice it come in.” He realized how thin that sounded, considering the desolate platform.

As they drove toward his place, she trailed her hand out the window, cupping the wind aerodynamically, as children do. He thought she looked smart and fresh in her white linen dress with its high mandarin collar. She sat deep in the seat, either completely relaxed or totally indifferent.

“Are those the only clothes you brought?” he asked, turning his head toward her, but keeping his eyes on the road.

“Yes, sure. I'll bet you were expecting some night things discreetly carried in a brown paper bag.”

“The bag could have been any color. I wouldn't have cared.” He braked and turned into a side road, then backed onto the highway again.

“You forgot something?”

“No. We're going back to the village. To buy you some clothes.”

“You don't like these?”

“They're fine. But they're not much for working in.”

“Working?”

“Certainly. You thought this was a vacation?”

“What kind of work?” she asked warily.

“I thought you might enjoy helping me paint a boat.”

“I'm being had.”

Jonathan nodded thoughtfully.

They stopped at the only shop in the village open on Sundays, a spurious Cape Cod structure decorated with fishing nets and glass balls calculated to delight weekend tourists from the city. The proprietor was no taciturn Down Easter; he was an intense man in his mid-forties, tending slightly to weight, wearing a tight-fitting Edwardian suit and a flowing pearl gray ascot. When he spoke, he thrust his lower jaw forward and relished the nasal vowels with deliberate sincerity.

While Jemima was in the back of the store picking out some shorts, a shirt, and a pair of canvas shoes, Jonathan selected other things, accepting the proprietors' estimate of size. The advice was not given graciously; there was a tone of peevish disappointment. “Oh, about a ten, I guess,” the proprietor said, then compressed his lips and averted his eyes. “Of course, it will change when she's had a few children. Her kind always does.” His eyebrows were in constant motion, each independent of the other.

Jonathan and Gem had driven a distance when she said, “That's the first time I've been a victim of prejudice on those grounds.”

“I've known and admired a lot of women,” Jonathan said in an accurate imitation of the proprietor's voice. “Some of my best friends are women...”

“But you wouldn't want your brother to marry one, right?”

“Well, you know what happens to land values if a woman moves into the neighborhood.”

The shadows of trees lining the road rippled in regular cadence over the hood, and sunlight flickered stroboscopically in the corners of their eyes.

She squeezed one of the packages. “Hey, what's this?”

“I'm sorry, but they didn't have any brown paper bags.”

She paused a second. “I see.”

The car turned into the drive and came around a line of plane trees screening the church from view. He opened the door and let her precede him into the house. She stopped in the midst of the nave and turned around, taking the total in. “This isn't a house, Jonathan. It's a movie set.”

He stepped around from his side of the boat to see how she was coming along. With her nose only ten niches from the wood and her tongue between her teeth with concentration, she was daubing at an area about a foot square that constituted the extent of her progress.

“You got the spot,” he said, “but you've missed the boat.”

“Hush up. Get around and paint your own side.”

“All done.”

She humphed. “Slapdash careless work, I imagine.”

“Any chance of your finishing before winter sets in?”

“Don't worry about me, man. I'm the goal-oriented type. I'll keep at this until it's done. Nothing could lure me away from the dignity of honest labor.”

“I was going to suggest lunch.”

“Sold.” She dropped the brush into the can of thinner and wiped her hands with a rag.

After bathing and changing clothes, she joined him at the bar for a prelunch martini.

“That's some bathtub you've got.”

“It pleases me.”

They drove across the island to take lunch at The Better 'Ole: seafood and champagne. The place was nearly empty, and it was cool with shadow. They chatted about how it was when they were children, and about Chicago jazz versus San Francisco, and Underground films, and how they both liked chilled melon balls for dessert.