The Parsifal Mosaic (52 page)

“Do the papers ever arrive?”

“Oh, yes, frequently. Especially for the talented, the productive. The payments go on for years.”

“I’d think there’d be risks. Someone who refuses, someone who threatens you with exposure.”

“Then we provide another paper,
příteli
. A death certificate.”

“My turn to ask. Who is ‘we’?”

“My turn to answer. I will not tell you.”

“But the Rabbi wants to cut you out of this fantastic business.”

“It’s possible.” The telephone rang, its bell abrasive. Kohoutek got out of the rocking chair and walked rapidly across the room. “Perhaps we shall learn now,” he said, placing his tea on the table, and picking up the phone in the middle of the second bell. “Yes?”

Havelock involuntarily held his breath; there were so many probabilities. A curious university athlete whose responsibility was the well-being of his tenants, who might have walked out into the hallway. A graduate student with an appointment. So many accidents …

“Keep trying,” said the Carpathian.

Michael breathed again.

Kohoutek came back to the chair, leaving his tea on the table. “There is no answer on Handelman’s phone.”

“He’s in Boston.”

“How much could you he persuaded to pay?”

“I don’t carry large sums with me,” replied Havelock, estimating the amount of cash in his suitcase. It was close to six thousand dollars—money he had taken out of Paris.

“You had twenty large sums for the Rabbi.”

“It was prearranged. I could give you a down payment. Five thousand.”

“Down payment on what?”

“I’ll be frank,” said Michael, leaning forward on the deacon’s bench. “The woman’s worth thirty-five thousand to us; that was the sum allocated. I’ve spent twenty.”

“With five, that leaves ten,” said the bull.

“It’s in New York. You can have it tomorrow, but I’ve got to see the woman tonight. I’ve got to take her tonight.”

“And be on a plane with my ten thousand dollars?”

“Why should I do that? It’s a budget item and I don’t concern myself with finances. Also, I suspect you can collect a fair amount from Handelman. A thief caught stealing from a thief. You’ve got him now; you could cut
him
out.”

Kohoutek laughed his bull of a laugh. “You are from the mountains,
Cechu!
But what guarantees do I have?”

“Send your best man with us. I have no gun; tell him to keep his at my head.”

“Through an airport? I am not a goat!”

“We’ll drive.”

“Why tonight?”

“They expect her in the early morning. I’m to bring her to a man at the corner of Sixty-second Street and York Avenue, at the entrance of the East River Drive. He has the remaining money. He’s to take her to Kennedy Airport, where arrangements have been made on an Aeroflot flight. Your man can make sure; she doesn’t get into the car until the money is paid. What more do you want?”

Kohoutek rocked, his squint returning. “The Rabbi is a thief. Is the
Cech
as well?”

“Where’s the hole? Can’t you trust your best man?”

“I am the best. Suppose it was me?”

“Why not?”

“Done!
We shall travel together, the woman in the back seat with me. One gun at her head, the other at yours. Two guns,
příteli!
Where is the five thousand dollars?”

“In my car up on the road. Send someone with me, but I get it myself; he stays outside. That’s the condition or we have no negotiation.”

“You Communists are all so suspicious.”

“We learned it in the mountains.”

“Cechu!
”

“Where’s the woman?”

“In a back building. She refused to eat before, threw the tray at our Cuban. But then, she’s educated; it is not always a favorable thing, although it brings a higher price later. First, she must be broken; perhaps the Cuban has already begun. He’s a hot-tempered
macho
with balls that clank on the floor. Her type of woman is his favorite.”

Michael smiled; it was the most difficult smile he had rendered in his life. “Are the rooms wired?”

“What for? Where are they going? What plans can they hatch alone? Besides, to install and service such items could raise gossip. The alarms on the road are enough trouble; a man comes from Cleveland to look after them.”

“I want to see her. Then I want to get out of here.”

“Why not? When I see five thousand dollars.” Kohoutek stopped rocking and turned to his left, shouting in English.
“You!
Take our guest up in the truck to his automobile. Have him drive and keep your gun on his head!”

Sixteen minutes later, Havelock counted out the money into the Moravian’s hands.

“Go to the woman,
příteli,”
said Kokoutek.

He walked across the fenced—in compound to the left of the silo, the man with the Spanish Llama behind him.

“Over there, to your right,” said the guard.

There was a barn at the edge of the woods, but it was more than a barn. There were lights in several windows above the ground level; it was a second floor. And silhouetted in those lights were straight black lines; they were bars. Whoever was behind those windows could not get out. It was a barracks.
Ein Konzentrationslager
.

Michael could feel the welcome pressure of the leather scabbard at the base of his spine; the scaling knife was still in place. He knew he could take the guard
and
the Llama—a slip in the snow, a skid over iced grass and the man in the leather jacket was a dead man—but not yet. It would come later, when Jenna understood, when—and if—he could convince her. And if he could not, both of them would die. One losing his life, the other in a hell that would kill her.

Listen to me! Listen to me, for we are all that’s left of sanity! What happened to us? What did they do to us?

“Knock on the door,” said the man behind.

Havelock rapped on the wood. A voice with a Latin accent answered.

“Yes? What is it?”

“Open up, Mr. K’s orders. This is Ryan. Hurry!”

The door was opened two or three indies by a stocky man in a bolero and dungarees. He stared first at Michael, then saw the guard and opened the door completely.

“Nobody called,” he said.

“We thought you might be busy,” said the man behind Havelock, a snide laugh in hit voice.

“With what? Two pigs and a crazy woman?”

“She’s the one we want to see. He wants to see.”

“He better have a
pene
made like rock, I tell you no lie! I looked in ten minutes ago; she’s asleep. I don’t think she slept for a couple of days maybe.”

“Then he can jump her,” said the guard, pushing Michael through the door.

They climbed the stairs and entered a narrow corridor with doors on both sides. Steel doors with slits in the center, sliding panels for peering inside.

We are in our movable prison
. Where was it? Prague? Trieste?… Barcelona?

“She’s in this room,” said the Latin, stopping at the third door. “You want to look?”

“Just open the door,” said Havelock. “And wait downstairs.”

“Mr. K’s orders,” broke in the leather-jacketed guard. “Do what the man says.”

The Cuban took a key from his belt, unlocked the cell door, and stood aside.

“Get out of here,” said Michael.

The two men walked up the corridor.

Havelock opened the door.

The small room was dark, and the dark light of night grudgingly spilled through the window, the white flakes bouncing off the glass and the bars. He could see her on the bed, more cot than bed. Fully dressed, she was lying face down, her blond hair cascading over her shoulders, one arm hanging down limp, the. hand touching the floor. She lay on top of the covers, her clothes disheveled, the position of her body and the sound of her deep breathing proof of exhaustion. Watching her, he ached, pain pressing his chest for the pain she had endured, so much of it because of him. Trust had fled, instincts rejected, love repulsed; he had been no less an animal than the animals who had done this to her … he was ashamed. And filled with love.

He could see the outline of a floor lamp next to the bed; lighted, it would shine down on her. A cold fear went
through him and his throat tightened. He had faced risks before, but never a danger like this, never a moment that meant so much to him. If he lost it—lost her, the bond between them shattered irremediably—nothing would matter except the death of liars. He was profoundly aware that he would willingly give up years of life for the moment to be frozen, not to have to turn on the light—simply to call out her name softly, as he had called it a hundred times a hundred, and have her hand fall into his, her face come against his. But the waiting, too, was self-inflicted torture; what were the words?
Between the acting of a dreadful thing and the first motion, all the interim
is
like a phantasma or a hideous dream
. It would end or it would begin when he turned on the lamp. He walked silently to the bed.

An arm shot up in the darkness. Pale skin flashing in the dim light, a hand plunged into his abdomen. He felt the impact of a sharp pointed object-not a knife, something else. He leaped back and grabbed the hand, twisting yet not twisting—to cause her further pain was not in him. He could not hurt her.

She’ll kill you if she can
. Broussac.

Jenna rolled off the bed, her left leg bent, her knee crashing into his kidney, her sharp fingernails clawing his neck, digging into his skin. He could not strike her, he could not do it. She grabbed his hair, pulling his face down, and her right knee smashed into the bridge of his nose. The darkness was splintered into fragments of white light.

“Cunĕ!
” she cried in a muted voice, made guttural by her fury.

He understood; he had taught her well.
Use an enemy. Kill him only if you must. But use him first
. Escape was her intent; it accounted for the disheveled clothes, the skirt pulled up to expose her thigh. He had attributed it all to exhaustion, but he had been wrong; it was a sight for a
prase
peering through a slot in the cell door.

“Stůj!
” he whispered harshly as he held her, twisting nothing, damaging nothing. “
Těsí mĕ!
” he freed his left hand and pulled her writhing body across the small room to the lamp. He reached over and found the switch; he snapped it on, her face in front of his.

She stared at him, her wide brown eyes bursting from their sockets with that strange admixture of fear and loathing
he had seen in the window of the small plane in Col des Moulinets. The cry that was wrenched from her throat came also from the center of her life; the scream that grew from it was prolonged and horrible—a child in a cellar of terror, a woman who faced the return of infinite pain. She kicked wildly, and spun away, breaking his grip, and threw herself across the bed and against the wall. She whipped her hand back and forth, slashing madly, a crazed animal cornered, with nothing left but to end its life screaming, clawing, thrashing as the trap snapped shut. In her hand she grasped the instrument that had been her only hope for freedom; it was a fork, its tines tinted with his blood.

“Listen
to me!” he whispered sharply again. “It was done to both of us! It’s what I’ve come to tell you, what I tried to tell you at Col des Moulinets!”

“It was done to
me!
You tried to
kill
me … how many times? If I’m to die, then you—”

He lunged, and pinning her hand against the wall, her right arm under his, he forced her to stop writhing.

“Broussac
believed
you … but then she believed
me!
Try to understand. She knew I told her the truth!”

“You don’t know the truth! Liar,
liar!
”
She spat in his face; she was kicking, twisting, digging the nails of her trapped hand into his back.

“They wanted me out and you were the way! I don’t know why, but I know men have been killed … a woman, too, who was meant to be you! They want to kill us both now, they
have
to!”

“Liar!
”

“There are liars, yes, but I’m not one of them!”

“You are, you
are!
You sold yourself to the
zvířata! Kurva!
”

“No!
” He twisted her hand, the bloodied fork protruding from her clenched fist. She winced in pain as he pulled her wrist down. Then she slowly reduced her counterpressure, her wide eyes frightened still, hating still, but piercing, too, with confusion. He placed the fork against his throat and whispered. “You know what to do,” he said carefully, clearly. “The windpipe. Once punctured there’s no way out for me here.… But there is for you. Pretend to go along with them; be passive, but watch the guard—as you know, he’s a goat. The sooner you’re cooperative, the sooner they’ll find you work on the outside. Remember, all you want are your
papers; they’re everything to you. But when they let you out, somehow get to a phone and reach Broussac in Paris—you can do it. She’ll help you because she knows the truth.” He stopped and took his hand away, leaving hers free. “Now, do it. Either kill me or believe me.”

Her stare was to him a scream echoing in the dark regions of his mind and hurling him into the horror of a thousand memories. Her lips trembled, and slowly it happened. Fear and bewilderment remained in her eyes, but the hatred was receding. Then the tears came, welling up slowly; they were the balm that meant the healing could begin.

Jenna dropped her hand and he took it, holding it in his own. The fork fell from her unclenched hand, and her body went limp, as the deep, terrible sobs came.

He held her. It was all he could do, all he wanted to do.

The sobs subsided and the minutes went by in silence. All they could hear was their own breathing, all they felt was each other as they clung together. Finally he whispered, “We’re getting out, but it won’t be clean. Did you meet Kohoutek?”

“Yes, a horrible man.”

“He’s going with us, supposedly to pick up a final payment for you.”

“But there isn’t any,” said Jenna, pulling her face back, studying his, her eyes absorbing him, enveloping him. “Let me look at you, just look at you.”