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When he could handle it, he slung the air tank on and began the hard climb up the jumble of infall that blocked off the mouth of the Crystal Cave. He recalled Le Cagot telling him to try a bit to the left, because he was sitting in the line of fall and was too comfortable to move.
Twice, he had to struggle out of the tank harness while clinging to scant points of purchase because the crack he had to wriggle through was too tight for a man and tank at once without risking damage to the mask slung from his chest. Each time, he took care to tie the tank securely, because a fall might knock off its fitting, exploding the cylinder and leaving him with no air to make the final cave swim and making all this work and torture futile.
When he achieved the thin ledge directly above the roaring waterfall, he directed his lamp down tire long drop, up which mist rose and billowed in the windless air. He paused only long enough to catch his breath and slow his heartbeat. There could be no long rests from now on, no chances for his body and hands to stiffen up, or for his imagination to cripple his determination.
The deafening roar of the falls and the roiling 40° mist insulated his mind from any thoughts of wider scope than the immediate task. He edged along the slimy, worn ledge that had once been the lip of the waterfall until be found the outcrop of rock from which Le Cagot had belayed him during his first descent along the glistening sheet of falling water. There would be no protecting belay this time. As he inched down, he came upon the first of the pitons he had driven in before, snapped a carabiner into the first and tied off a doubled line, threading and snapping in another at each piton, to shorten his fall, should he come off the face. Again, as before, it was not long before the combined friction of the line passing through these snap links made pulling it through difficult and dangerous, as the effort tended to lift him from the scant boot jams and fingerholds the face provided.
The water and the rope tortured his palms, and he clutched at his holds ever harder and harder, as though to punish the pain with excess. When he reached the point at which he would have to break through the sheet of water and pass behind the falls, he discovered that he could no longer drag down slack. The weight of water on the line, the number of carabiners through which it was strung, and his growing weakness combined to make this impossible. He would have to abandon the rope and climb free from here on. As before, he reached through the silver-and-black surface of the falls, which split in a heavy, throbbing bracelet around his wrist. He felt for and located the sharp little crack, invisible behind the face of the falls, into which he had wedged his fingers before. Ducking through the falls would be harder this time. The tank presented additional surface to the falls; his fingers were raw and numb; and his reserves of strength were gone. One smooth move. Just swing through it. There is a good ledge behind the cascade, and a book corner piled with rubble that made an easy climb down. He took three deep breaths and swung under the face of the falls.
Recent rains had made the falls twice as thick as before and more than twice as heavy. Its weight battered his helmet and shoulders and tried to tear the tank from his back. His numbed fingers were pried from the sharp crack; and he fell.
The first thing he became aware of was the relative quiet. The second thing was the water. He was behind the falls, at the base of the seres pile, sitting hip-deep in water. He may have been unconscious for a time, but he had no sense of it. The events were strung together in his mind: the battering of the water on his back and tank; the pain as his skinless fingers were wrenched from their hold; clatter, noise, pain, shock as he fell to the rubble pile and tumbled down it—then this relative silence, and waist-deep water where, before, there had been wet rock. The silence was no problem; he was not stunned. He had noticed last time how the falls seemed to muffle the roar once he was behind it. But the water? Did that mean recent rains had seeped down, making a lake of the floor of the Crystal Cavern?
Was he injured? He moved his legs; they were all right. So were his arms. His right shoulder was hurt. He could lift it, but there was gritty pain at the top of its arc. A bone bruise, maybe. Painful, but not debilitating. He had decided that he had come through the fall miraculously unhurt, when he became aware of a peculiar sensation. The set of his teeth wasn’t right. They were touching cusp to cusp. The smallest attempt to open his mouth shocked him with such agony that he felt himself slipping toward unconsciousness. His jaw was broken.
The face mask. Had it taken the fall? He tugged it from its pouch and examined it in the light of his lamp, which was yellowing because the batteries were fading. The faceplate was cracked.
It was a hairline crack. It might hold, so long as there was no wrench or torque on the rubber fittings. And what was the chance of that, down in the ripping current at the bottom of the Wine Cellar? Not much.
When he stood, the water came only to midshin. He waded out through the largely dissipated waterfall into the Crystal Cavern, and the water got deeper as the mist of frigid water thinned behind him.
One of the two magnesium flares had broken in his fall; its greasy powder had coated the other flare, which had to be wiped off carefully before it could be lighted, lest the flame rush down the sides, burning his hand. He struck off the flare on its cap; it sputtered and blossomed into brilliant white light, illuminating the distant walls, encrusted with glittering crystals, and picking out the beauty of calcite drapery and slender stalactites. But these last did not point down to stumpy stalagmites, as they had done before. The floor of the cave was a shallow lake that covered the low speleotherns. His first fears were supported: recent rains had filled this nether end of the cave system; the whole long marl chute at the far end of the cave was underwater.
Hel’s impulse was to give in, to wade out to the edge of the cave and find a shelf to sit on where he could rest and lose himself in meditation. It seemed too hard now; the mathematics of probability too steep. At the outset, he had thought that this last, improbable task, the swim through the Wine Cellar toward light and air, would be the easiest from a psychological point of view. Denied alternatives, the weight and expanse of the entire cave system behind him, the final swim would have the strength of desperation. Indeed, he had thought his chances of making it through might be greater than they would have been if he had Le Cagot to belay him, for in that case he would have worked to only half the limit of his endurance, needing the rest to return, should the way be blocked, or too long. As it was, be had hoped his chances would be almost doubled, as there was no coming back through that force of water.
But now… the Crystal Cave had flooded, and his swim was doubled in length. The advantage of despair was gone.
Wouldn’t it be better to sit out death in dignity, rather than struggle against fate like a panicked animal? What chance did he have? The slightest movement of his jaw shocked him with agony; his shoulder was stiff and it ground painfully in its socket; his palms were flayed; even the goddamned faceplate of his mask was unlikely to withstand the currents of that underground pipe. This thing wasn’t even a gamble. It was like flipping coins against Fate, with Fate having both heads and tails. Hel won only if the coin landed on edge.
He waded heavily toward the side wall of the cavern, where flowstone oozed down like frozen taffy. He would sit there and wait it out.
His flare sputtered out, and the eternal spelaean darkness closed in on his mind with a crushing weight. Spots of light like minute crystal organisms under a microscope sketched across the darkness with each movement of his eyes. They faded, and the dark was total.
Nothing in the world would be easier than, to accept death with dignity, with shibumi.
And Hana? And that insane Third World priest who had contributed to the death of Le Cagot and Hannah Stern? And Diamond?
All right. All right, damn it! He wedged the rubberized flashlight between two outcroppings of aragonite, and in its beam attached the mask to the air tank, grunting with pain as he tightened the connections with his flayed fingers. After carefully threading the straps over his bruised shoulder, he opened the inflow valve, then dipped up a little spit water to clear the faceplate of breath mist. The pressure of the mask against his broken jaw was painful, but he could manage it.
His legs were still unhurt; he would swim with legs only, holding the flashlight in his good hand. As soon as it was deep enough, he laid out on the water and swam—swimming was easier than wading.
In the pellucid water of the cave, unclouded by organisms, the flashlight picked up underwater features as though through air. It was not until he had entered the marl chute that he felt the influence of the current—more a suction downward than a push from behind.
The pressure of the water plugged his ears, making his breathing loud in the cavities of his head.
The suction increased as he neared the bottom of the marl chute, and the force of the water torqued his body toward the sunken sump of the Wine Cellar. From here on, he would not swim; the current would carry him, would drag him through; all his effort must be bent to slowing his speed and to controlling his direction. The pull of the current was an invisible force; there was no air in the water, no particles, no evidence of the tons of force that gripped him.
It was not until he attempted to grasp a ledge, to slop for a moment and collect himself before entering the sump, that he knew the power of the current. The ledge was ripped from his hold, and he was turned over on his back and drawn down into the sump. He struggled to reverse himself, tucking up and rolling, because he must enter the outflow pipe below feet first if he was to have any chance at all. If he were carried head first into an obstruction, that would be it.
Inexplicably, the suction seemed to lessen once he was in the sump, and he settled slowly toward the bottom, his feet toward the triangular pipe below. He took a deep breath and braced his nerves, remembering how that current had snatched away the dye packets so quickly that the eye could not follow them.
Almost leisurely, his body floated toward the bottom of the sump pit. That was his last clear image.
The current gripped him, and he shot into the pipe. His foot hit something; the leg crumpled, the knee striking his chest; he was spinning; the flashlight was gone; he took a blow on the spine, another on the hip.
And suddenly he was lodged behind a choke stone, and the water was roaring past him, tearing at him. The mask twisted, and the faceplate blew out, the broken pieces cutting his leg as they flashed past. He had been holding his breath from fear for several seconds, and the need for air was pounding in his temples. Water rushed over his face and eddied up his nostrils. It was the goddamned tank! He was wedged in there because the space was too narrow for both his body and the tank! He gripped his knife with all the force of his body focused on his right hand, as the water sought to twist the knife from his grasp. Had to cut away the tank! The weight of the current against the cylinder pressed the straps against his shoulders. No way to slip the knife under. He must saw through the webbing directly against his chest.
White pain.
His pulse throbbed, expanding in his head. His throat convulsed for air. Cut harder! Cut, damn it!
The tank went, smashing his foot as it rushed out under him. He was moving again, twisting. The knife was gone. With a terrible crunching sound, something hit the back of his head. His diaphragm heaved within him, sucking for breath. His heartbeat hammered in his head as he tumbled and twisted in the chaos of foam and bubbles.
Bubbles… Foam! He could see! Swim up! Swim!
Part Six
Etchebar
The Church at Alos
New York
Gouffre Field/Col. Pierre St. Martin
Twice, he had to struggle out of the tank harness while clinging to scant points of purchase because the crack he had to wriggle through was too tight for a man and tank at once without risking damage to the mask slung from his chest. Each time, he took care to tie the tank securely, because a fall might knock off its fitting, exploding the cylinder and leaving him with no air to make the final cave swim and making all this work and torture futile.
When he achieved the thin ledge directly above the roaring waterfall, he directed his lamp down tire long drop, up which mist rose and billowed in the windless air. He paused only long enough to catch his breath and slow his heartbeat. There could be no long rests from now on, no chances for his body and hands to stiffen up, or for his imagination to cripple his determination.
The deafening roar of the falls and the roiling 40° mist insulated his mind from any thoughts of wider scope than the immediate task. He edged along the slimy, worn ledge that had once been the lip of the waterfall until be found the outcrop of rock from which Le Cagot had belayed him during his first descent along the glistening sheet of falling water. There would be no protecting belay this time. As he inched down, he came upon the first of the pitons he had driven in before, snapped a carabiner into the first and tied off a doubled line, threading and snapping in another at each piton, to shorten his fall, should he come off the face. Again, as before, it was not long before the combined friction of the line passing through these snap links made pulling it through difficult and dangerous, as the effort tended to lift him from the scant boot jams and fingerholds the face provided.
The water and the rope tortured his palms, and he clutched at his holds ever harder and harder, as though to punish the pain with excess. When he reached the point at which he would have to break through the sheet of water and pass behind the falls, he discovered that he could no longer drag down slack. The weight of water on the line, the number of carabiners through which it was strung, and his growing weakness combined to make this impossible. He would have to abandon the rope and climb free from here on. As before, he reached through the silver-and-black surface of the falls, which split in a heavy, throbbing bracelet around his wrist. He felt for and located the sharp little crack, invisible behind the face of the falls, into which he had wedged his fingers before. Ducking through the falls would be harder this time. The tank presented additional surface to the falls; his fingers were raw and numb; and his reserves of strength were gone. One smooth move. Just swing through it. There is a good ledge behind the cascade, and a book corner piled with rubble that made an easy climb down. He took three deep breaths and swung under the face of the falls.
Recent rains had made the falls twice as thick as before and more than twice as heavy. Its weight battered his helmet and shoulders and tried to tear the tank from his back. His numbed fingers were pried from the sharp crack; and he fell.
* * *
The first thing he became aware of was the relative quiet. The second thing was the water. He was behind the falls, at the base of the seres pile, sitting hip-deep in water. He may have been unconscious for a time, but he had no sense of it. The events were strung together in his mind: the battering of the water on his back and tank; the pain as his skinless fingers were wrenched from their hold; clatter, noise, pain, shock as he fell to the rubble pile and tumbled down it—then this relative silence, and waist-deep water where, before, there had been wet rock. The silence was no problem; he was not stunned. He had noticed last time how the falls seemed to muffle the roar once he was behind it. But the water? Did that mean recent rains had seeped down, making a lake of the floor of the Crystal Cavern?
Was he injured? He moved his legs; they were all right. So were his arms. His right shoulder was hurt. He could lift it, but there was gritty pain at the top of its arc. A bone bruise, maybe. Painful, but not debilitating. He had decided that he had come through the fall miraculously unhurt, when he became aware of a peculiar sensation. The set of his teeth wasn’t right. They were touching cusp to cusp. The smallest attempt to open his mouth shocked him with such agony that he felt himself slipping toward unconsciousness. His jaw was broken.
The face mask. Had it taken the fall? He tugged it from its pouch and examined it in the light of his lamp, which was yellowing because the batteries were fading. The faceplate was cracked.
It was a hairline crack. It might hold, so long as there was no wrench or torque on the rubber fittings. And what was the chance of that, down in the ripping current at the bottom of the Wine Cellar? Not much.
When he stood, the water came only to midshin. He waded out through the largely dissipated waterfall into the Crystal Cavern, and the water got deeper as the mist of frigid water thinned behind him.
One of the two magnesium flares had broken in his fall; its greasy powder had coated the other flare, which had to be wiped off carefully before it could be lighted, lest the flame rush down the sides, burning his hand. He struck off the flare on its cap; it sputtered and blossomed into brilliant white light, illuminating the distant walls, encrusted with glittering crystals, and picking out the beauty of calcite drapery and slender stalactites. But these last did not point down to stumpy stalagmites, as they had done before. The floor of the cave was a shallow lake that covered the low speleotherns. His first fears were supported: recent rains had filled this nether end of the cave system; the whole long marl chute at the far end of the cave was underwater.
Hel’s impulse was to give in, to wade out to the edge of the cave and find a shelf to sit on where he could rest and lose himself in meditation. It seemed too hard now; the mathematics of probability too steep. At the outset, he had thought that this last, improbable task, the swim through the Wine Cellar toward light and air, would be the easiest from a psychological point of view. Denied alternatives, the weight and expanse of the entire cave system behind him, the final swim would have the strength of desperation. Indeed, he had thought his chances of making it through might be greater than they would have been if he had Le Cagot to belay him, for in that case he would have worked to only half the limit of his endurance, needing the rest to return, should the way be blocked, or too long. As it was, be had hoped his chances would be almost doubled, as there was no coming back through that force of water.
But now… the Crystal Cave had flooded, and his swim was doubled in length. The advantage of despair was gone.
Wouldn’t it be better to sit out death in dignity, rather than struggle against fate like a panicked animal? What chance did he have? The slightest movement of his jaw shocked him with agony; his shoulder was stiff and it ground painfully in its socket; his palms were flayed; even the goddamned faceplate of his mask was unlikely to withstand the currents of that underground pipe. This thing wasn’t even a gamble. It was like flipping coins against Fate, with Fate having both heads and tails. Hel won only if the coin landed on edge.
He waded heavily toward the side wall of the cavern, where flowstone oozed down like frozen taffy. He would sit there and wait it out.
His flare sputtered out, and the eternal spelaean darkness closed in on his mind with a crushing weight. Spots of light like minute crystal organisms under a microscope sketched across the darkness with each movement of his eyes. They faded, and the dark was total.
Nothing in the world would be easier than, to accept death with dignity, with shibumi.
And Hana? And that insane Third World priest who had contributed to the death of Le Cagot and Hannah Stern? And Diamond?
All right. All right, damn it! He wedged the rubberized flashlight between two outcroppings of aragonite, and in its beam attached the mask to the air tank, grunting with pain as he tightened the connections with his flayed fingers. After carefully threading the straps over his bruised shoulder, he opened the inflow valve, then dipped up a little spit water to clear the faceplate of breath mist. The pressure of the mask against his broken jaw was painful, but he could manage it.
His legs were still unhurt; he would swim with legs only, holding the flashlight in his good hand. As soon as it was deep enough, he laid out on the water and swam—swimming was easier than wading.
In the pellucid water of the cave, unclouded by organisms, the flashlight picked up underwater features as though through air. It was not until he had entered the marl chute that he felt the influence of the current—more a suction downward than a push from behind.
The pressure of the water plugged his ears, making his breathing loud in the cavities of his head.
The suction increased as he neared the bottom of the marl chute, and the force of the water torqued his body toward the sunken sump of the Wine Cellar. From here on, he would not swim; the current would carry him, would drag him through; all his effort must be bent to slowing his speed and to controlling his direction. The pull of the current was an invisible force; there was no air in the water, no particles, no evidence of the tons of force that gripped him.
It was not until he attempted to grasp a ledge, to slop for a moment and collect himself before entering the sump, that he knew the power of the current. The ledge was ripped from his hold, and he was turned over on his back and drawn down into the sump. He struggled to reverse himself, tucking up and rolling, because he must enter the outflow pipe below feet first if he was to have any chance at all. If he were carried head first into an obstruction, that would be it.
Inexplicably, the suction seemed to lessen once he was in the sump, and he settled slowly toward the bottom, his feet toward the triangular pipe below. He took a deep breath and braced his nerves, remembering how that current had snatched away the dye packets so quickly that the eye could not follow them.
Almost leisurely, his body floated toward the bottom of the sump pit. That was his last clear image.
The current gripped him, and he shot into the pipe. His foot hit something; the leg crumpled, the knee striking his chest; he was spinning; the flashlight was gone; he took a blow on the spine, another on the hip.
And suddenly he was lodged behind a choke stone, and the water was roaring past him, tearing at him. The mask twisted, and the faceplate blew out, the broken pieces cutting his leg as they flashed past. He had been holding his breath from fear for several seconds, and the need for air was pounding in his temples. Water rushed over his face and eddied up his nostrils. It was the goddamned tank! He was wedged in there because the space was too narrow for both his body and the tank! He gripped his knife with all the force of his body focused on his right hand, as the water sought to twist the knife from his grasp. Had to cut away the tank! The weight of the current against the cylinder pressed the straps against his shoulders. No way to slip the knife under. He must saw through the webbing directly against his chest.
White pain.
His pulse throbbed, expanding in his head. His throat convulsed for air. Cut harder! Cut, damn it!
The tank went, smashing his foot as it rushed out under him. He was moving again, twisting. The knife was gone. With a terrible crunching sound, something hit the back of his head. His diaphragm heaved within him, sucking for breath. His heartbeat hammered in his head as he tumbled and twisted in the chaos of foam and bubbles.
Bubbles… Foam! He could see! Swim up! Swim!
Part Six
Tsuru no Sugomori
Etchebar
Hel parked the Vol vo in the deserted square of etchebar and got out heavily, forgetting to close the door behind him, neglecting to give the car its ritual bash. He drew a long breath and pushed it out slowly, then he walked up the curving road toward his château.
From behind half-closed shutters women of the village watched him and admonished their children not to play in the square until M. Hel was gone. It had been eight days since M. Hel had gone into the mountains with Le Cagot, and those terrible men in uniform had descended on the village and done dreadful things to the château. No one had seen M. Hel since then; it had been rumored that he was dead. Now he was returning to his demolished home, but no one dared to greet him. In this ancient high mountain village, primitive instincts prevailed; everyone knew it was unwise to associate with the unfortunate, lest the misfortune be contagious. After all, was it not God’s will that this terrible thing happen? Was not the outlander being punished for living with an Oriental woman, possibly without the sanction of marriage. And who could know what other things God was punishing him for? Oh yes, one could feel pity—one was required by the church to feel pity—but it would be unwise to consort with those whom God punishes. One must be compassionate, but not to the extent of personal risk.
As he walked up the long allée, Hel could not see what they had done to his home; the sweeping pines screened it from view. But from the bottom of the terrace, the extent of the damage was clear. The central block and the east wing were gone, the walls blown away and rubble thrown in all directions, blocks of granite and marble lying partially buried in the scarred lawn as much as fifty meters away; a low jagged wall rimmed the gaping cellars, deep in shadow and dank with seep water from underground springs. Most of the west wing still stood, the rooms open to the weather where the connecting walls had been ripped away. It had been burned out; floors had caved in, and charred beams dangled, broken, into the spaces below. The glass had been blown from every window and porte-fenêtre, and above them were wide daggers of soot where flames had roared out. The smell of burned oak was carried on a soft wind that fluttered shreds of drapery.
There was no sound other than the sibilance of the wind through the pines as he picked his way through the rubble to investigate the standing walls of the west wing. At three places he found holes drilled into the granite blocks. The charges they had placed had failed to go off; and they had contented themselves with the destruction of the fire.
It was the Japanese garden that pained him most. Obviously, the raiders had been instructed to take special pains with the garden. They had used flame throwers. The sounding stream wound through charred stubble and, even after a week, its surface carried an oily residue. The bathing house and its surrounding bamboo grove were gone, but already a few shoots of bamboo, that most tenacious grass, were pushing through the blackened ground.
The tatami ’d dependency and its attached gun room had been spared, save that the rice-paper doors were blown in by the concussion. These fragile structures had bent before the storm and had survived.
As he walked across the ravished garden, his shoes kicked up puffs of fine black ash. He sat heavily on the sill of the tatami ’d room, his legs dangling over the edge. It was odd and somehow touching that tea utensils were still set out on the low lacquered table.
He was sitting, his head bent in deep fatigue, when he felt the approach of Pierre.
The old man’s voice was moist with regret. “Oh, M’sieur! Oh! M’sieur! See what they have done to us! Poor Madame. You have seen her? She is well?”
For the past four days, Hel had been at the hospital in Oloron, leaving Hana’s side only when ordered to by the doctors.
Pierre’s rheumy eyes drooped with compassion as he realized his patron’s physical state. “But look at you, M’sieur!” A bandage was wrapped under Hel’s chin and over his head, to hold the jaw in place while it mended; bruises on his face were still plum colored; inside his shirt, his upper arm was wrapped tightly to his chest to prevent movement of the shoulder, and both his hands were bandaged from the wrists to the second knuckle.
“You don’t look so good yourself, Pierre,” he said, his voice muffled and dental.
Pierre shrugged. “Oh, I shall be all right. But see, our hands are the same!” He lifted his hands, revealing wraps of gauze covering the gel on his burned palms. He had a bruise over one eyebrow.
Hel noticed a dark stain down the front of Pierre’s unbuttoned shirt. Obviously, a glass of wine had slipped from between the awkward paddles at the ends of his wrists. “How did you hurt your head?”
“It was the bandits, M’sieur. One of them struck me with a rifle butt when I was trying to stop them.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“Oh, M’sieur! It was too terrible!”
“Just tell me about it. Be calm, and tell me.”
“Perhaps we could go to the gate house? I shall offer you a little glass, and maybe I will have one myself. Then I shall tell you.”
“All right.”
As they walked to Pierre’s gate house, the old gardener suggested that M. Hel stay with him, for the bandits had spared his little home.
Hel sat in a deep chair with broken springs from which litter had been thrown by Pierre to make a space for his guest. The old man had drunk from the bottle, an easier thing to hold, and was now staring out over the valley from the small window of his second-floor living quarters.
“I was working, M’sieur. Attending to a thousand things. Madame had called down to Tardets for a car to take her to where the airplanes land, and I was waiting for it to arrive. I heard a buzzing from far out over the mountains. The sound grew louder. They came like huge flying insects, skimming over the hills, close to the earth.”
“What came?”
“The bandits! In autogiros!”
“In helicopters?”
“Yes. Two of them. With a great noise, they landed in the park, and the ugly machines vomited men out. The men all had guns. They were dressed in mottled green clothes, with orange berets. They shouted to one another as they ran toward the château. I called after them, telling them to go away. The women of the kitchen screamed and fled toward the village. I ran after, the bandits, threatening to tell M’sieur Hel on them if they did not go at once. One of them hit me with his gun, and I fell down. Great noise! Explosions! And all the time the two great autogiros sat on the lawn, their wings turning around and around. When I could stand, I ran toward the château. I was willing to fight them, M’sieur. I was willing to fight them!”
“I know.”
“Yes, but they were by then running back toward their machines. I was knocked down again! When I got to the château… Oh, M’sieur! All gone! Smoke and flame everywhere! Everything! Everything! Then, M’sieur…Oh, God in mercy! I saw Madame at the window of the burning part. All around her, flame, I rushed in. Fiery things were falling all about me. When I got to her, she was just standing there. She could not find her way out! The windows had burst in upon her, and the glass… Oh, M’sieur, the glass!” Pierre had been struggling to contain his tears. He snatched off his beret and covered his face with it. There was a diagonal line across his forehead separating white skin from his deeply weatherbeaten face. Not for forty years had his beret been off while he was outdoors. He scrubbed his eyes with his beret, snorted loudly, and put it on again. “I took Madame and brought her out. The way was blocked by burning things. I had to pull them away with my hands. But I got out! I got her out! But the glass!…” Pierre broke down; he gulped as tears flowed from his nostrils.
Hel rose and took the old man in his arms. “You were brave, Pierre.”
“But I am the patron when you are not here! And I failed to stop them!”
“You did all a man could do.”
“I tried to fight them!”
“I know.”
“And Madame? She will be well?”
“She will live.”
“And her eyes?”
Hel looked away from Pierre as he drew a slow breath and let it out in a long jet. For a time he did not speak. Then, clearing his throat, he said, “We have work to do, Pierre.”
“But, M’sieur. What work? The château is gone!”
“We shall clean up and repair what is left. I’ll need your help to hire the men and to guide them in their work.”
Pierre shook his head. He had failed to protect the château. He was not to be trusted.
“I want you to find men. Clear the rubble. Seal the west wing from the weather. Repair what must be repaired to get us through the winter. And next spring, we shall start to build again.”
“But, M’sieur! It will take forever to rebuild the château!”
“I didn’t say we would ever finish, Pierre.”
Pierre considered this. “All right,” he said, “all right. Oh, you have mail, M’sieur. A letter and a package. They are here somewhere.” He rummaged about the chaos of bottomless chairs, empty boxes, and refuse of no description with which he had furnished his home. “Ah! Here they are. Just where I put them for safekeeping.”
Both the package and letter were from Maurice de Lhandes. While Pierre fortified himself with another draw at the bottle, Hel read Maurice’s note:
My Dear Friend:
I wadded up and threw away my first epistolary effort because it began with a phrase so melodramatic as to bring laughter to me and, I feared, embarrassment to you. And yet, I can find no other way to say what I want to say. So here is that sophomoric first phrase:
When you read this, Nicholai, I shall be dead.
(Pause here for my ghostly laughter and your compassionate embarrassment.)
There are many reasons I might cite for my close feelings for you, but these three will do. First: Like me, you have always given the governments and the companies reason for fear and concern. Second:
You were the last person, other than Estelle, to whom I spoke during my life. And third: Not only did you never make a point of my physical peculiarity, you also never overlooked it, or brutalized my sensibilities by talking about it man to man.
I am sending you a gift (which you have probably already opened, greedy pig). It is something that may one day be of benefit to you. Do you remember my telling you that I had something on the United States of America? Something so dramatic that it would make the Statue of Liberty fall back and offer you whatever orifice you choose to use? Well, here it is.
I have sent you only the photocopy; I have destroyed the originals. But the enemy will not know that I have destroyed them, and the enemy does not know that I am dead. (Remarkable how peculiar it is to write that in the present tense!)
They will have no way to know that the originals are not in my possession in the button-down mode; so, with a little histrionic skill on your part, you should be able to manipulate them as you will.
As you know, native intelligence has always saved me from the foolishness of believing in life after death. But there can be nuisance value after death—and that thought pleases me.
Please visit Estelle from time to time, and, make her feel desirable. And give my love to your magnificent Oriental.
With all amicable sentiments,
PS. Did I mention the other night during dinner that the morels did not have enough lemon juice? I should have.
Hel broke the string on the package and scanned the contents. Affidavits, photographs, records, all revealing the persons and governmental organizations involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and with the cover-up of certain aspects of that assassination. Particularly interesting were statements from a person identified as the Umbrella Man, from another called the Man on the Fire Escape, and a third, the Knoll Commando.
Hel nodded. Very strong leverage indeed.
After a simple meal of sausage, bread, and onion washed down with raw red wine in Pierre’s littered room, they took a walk together over the grounds, staying well away from the painful scar of the château. Evening was falling, wisps of salmon and mauve clouds piling up against the mountains.
Hel mentioned that he would be gone for several days, and they could begin the work of repair when he returned.
“You would trust me to do it, M’sieur? After how I have failed you?” Pierre was feeling self-pitying. He had decided that he might have protected the Madame better if he had been totally sober.
Hel changed the subject. “What can we expect for weather tomorrow, Pierre?”
The old man glanced listlessly at the sky, and he shrugged. “I don’t know, M’sieur. To tell you the truth, I cannot really read the weather. I only pretend, to make myself seem important.”
“But, Pierre, your predictions are unfailing. I rely on them, and they have served me well.”
Pierre frowned, trying to remember. “Is this so, M’sieur?”
“I wouldn’t dare go into the mountains without your advice.”
“Is this so?”
“I am’ convinced that it is a matter of wisdom, and age, and Basque blood. I may achieve the age in time, even the wisdom. But the Basque blood…” Hel sighed and struck at a shrub they were passing.
Pierre was silent for a time as he pondered this. Finally he said, “You know? I think that what you say is true, M’sieur. It is a gift, probably. Even I believe it is the signs in the sky, but in reality it is a gift—a skill that only my people enjoy. For instance, you see how the sheep of the sky have russet fleeces? Now, it is important to know that the moon is in a descending phase, and that birds were swooping low this morning. From this, I can tell with certainty that…”
From behind half-closed shutters women of the village watched him and admonished their children not to play in the square until M. Hel was gone. It had been eight days since M. Hel had gone into the mountains with Le Cagot, and those terrible men in uniform had descended on the village and done dreadful things to the château. No one had seen M. Hel since then; it had been rumored that he was dead. Now he was returning to his demolished home, but no one dared to greet him. In this ancient high mountain village, primitive instincts prevailed; everyone knew it was unwise to associate with the unfortunate, lest the misfortune be contagious. After all, was it not God’s will that this terrible thing happen? Was not the outlander being punished for living with an Oriental woman, possibly without the sanction of marriage. And who could know what other things God was punishing him for? Oh yes, one could feel pity—one was required by the church to feel pity—but it would be unwise to consort with those whom God punishes. One must be compassionate, but not to the extent of personal risk.
As he walked up the long allée, Hel could not see what they had done to his home; the sweeping pines screened it from view. But from the bottom of the terrace, the extent of the damage was clear. The central block and the east wing were gone, the walls blown away and rubble thrown in all directions, blocks of granite and marble lying partially buried in the scarred lawn as much as fifty meters away; a low jagged wall rimmed the gaping cellars, deep in shadow and dank with seep water from underground springs. Most of the west wing still stood, the rooms open to the weather where the connecting walls had been ripped away. It had been burned out; floors had caved in, and charred beams dangled, broken, into the spaces below. The glass had been blown from every window and porte-fenêtre, and above them were wide daggers of soot where flames had roared out. The smell of burned oak was carried on a soft wind that fluttered shreds of drapery.
There was no sound other than the sibilance of the wind through the pines as he picked his way through the rubble to investigate the standing walls of the west wing. At three places he found holes drilled into the granite blocks. The charges they had placed had failed to go off; and they had contented themselves with the destruction of the fire.
It was the Japanese garden that pained him most. Obviously, the raiders had been instructed to take special pains with the garden. They had used flame throwers. The sounding stream wound through charred stubble and, even after a week, its surface carried an oily residue. The bathing house and its surrounding bamboo grove were gone, but already a few shoots of bamboo, that most tenacious grass, were pushing through the blackened ground.
The tatami ’d dependency and its attached gun room had been spared, save that the rice-paper doors were blown in by the concussion. These fragile structures had bent before the storm and had survived.
As he walked across the ravished garden, his shoes kicked up puffs of fine black ash. He sat heavily on the sill of the tatami ’d room, his legs dangling over the edge. It was odd and somehow touching that tea utensils were still set out on the low lacquered table.
He was sitting, his head bent in deep fatigue, when he felt the approach of Pierre.
The old man’s voice was moist with regret. “Oh, M’sieur! Oh! M’sieur! See what they have done to us! Poor Madame. You have seen her? She is well?”
For the past four days, Hel had been at the hospital in Oloron, leaving Hana’s side only when ordered to by the doctors.
Pierre’s rheumy eyes drooped with compassion as he realized his patron’s physical state. “But look at you, M’sieur!” A bandage was wrapped under Hel’s chin and over his head, to hold the jaw in place while it mended; bruises on his face were still plum colored; inside his shirt, his upper arm was wrapped tightly to his chest to prevent movement of the shoulder, and both his hands were bandaged from the wrists to the second knuckle.
“You don’t look so good yourself, Pierre,” he said, his voice muffled and dental.
Pierre shrugged. “Oh, I shall be all right. But see, our hands are the same!” He lifted his hands, revealing wraps of gauze covering the gel on his burned palms. He had a bruise over one eyebrow.
Hel noticed a dark stain down the front of Pierre’s unbuttoned shirt. Obviously, a glass of wine had slipped from between the awkward paddles at the ends of his wrists. “How did you hurt your head?”
“It was the bandits, M’sieur. One of them struck me with a rifle butt when I was trying to stop them.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“Oh, M’sieur! It was too terrible!”
“Just tell me about it. Be calm, and tell me.”
“Perhaps we could go to the gate house? I shall offer you a little glass, and maybe I will have one myself. Then I shall tell you.”
“All right.”
As they walked to Pierre’s gate house, the old gardener suggested that M. Hel stay with him, for the bandits had spared his little home.
Hel sat in a deep chair with broken springs from which litter had been thrown by Pierre to make a space for his guest. The old man had drunk from the bottle, an easier thing to hold, and was now staring out over the valley from the small window of his second-floor living quarters.
“I was working, M’sieur. Attending to a thousand things. Madame had called down to Tardets for a car to take her to where the airplanes land, and I was waiting for it to arrive. I heard a buzzing from far out over the mountains. The sound grew louder. They came like huge flying insects, skimming over the hills, close to the earth.”
“What came?”
“The bandits! In autogiros!”
“In helicopters?”
“Yes. Two of them. With a great noise, they landed in the park, and the ugly machines vomited men out. The men all had guns. They were dressed in mottled green clothes, with orange berets. They shouted to one another as they ran toward the château. I called after them, telling them to go away. The women of the kitchen screamed and fled toward the village. I ran after, the bandits, threatening to tell M’sieur Hel on them if they did not go at once. One of them hit me with his gun, and I fell down. Great noise! Explosions! And all the time the two great autogiros sat on the lawn, their wings turning around and around. When I could stand, I ran toward the château. I was willing to fight them, M’sieur. I was willing to fight them!”
“I know.”
“Yes, but they were by then running back toward their machines. I was knocked down again! When I got to the château… Oh, M’sieur! All gone! Smoke and flame everywhere! Everything! Everything! Then, M’sieur…Oh, God in mercy! I saw Madame at the window of the burning part. All around her, flame, I rushed in. Fiery things were falling all about me. When I got to her, she was just standing there. She could not find her way out! The windows had burst in upon her, and the glass… Oh, M’sieur, the glass!” Pierre had been struggling to contain his tears. He snatched off his beret and covered his face with it. There was a diagonal line across his forehead separating white skin from his deeply weatherbeaten face. Not for forty years had his beret been off while he was outdoors. He scrubbed his eyes with his beret, snorted loudly, and put it on again. “I took Madame and brought her out. The way was blocked by burning things. I had to pull them away with my hands. But I got out! I got her out! But the glass!…” Pierre broke down; he gulped as tears flowed from his nostrils.
Hel rose and took the old man in his arms. “You were brave, Pierre.”
“But I am the patron when you are not here! And I failed to stop them!”
“You did all a man could do.”
“I tried to fight them!”
“I know.”
“And Madame? She will be well?”
“She will live.”
“And her eyes?”
Hel looked away from Pierre as he drew a slow breath and let it out in a long jet. For a time he did not speak. Then, clearing his throat, he said, “We have work to do, Pierre.”
“But, M’sieur. What work? The château is gone!”
“We shall clean up and repair what is left. I’ll need your help to hire the men and to guide them in their work.”
Pierre shook his head. He had failed to protect the château. He was not to be trusted.
“I want you to find men. Clear the rubble. Seal the west wing from the weather. Repair what must be repaired to get us through the winter. And next spring, we shall start to build again.”
“But, M’sieur! It will take forever to rebuild the château!”
“I didn’t say we would ever finish, Pierre.”
Pierre considered this. “All right,” he said, “all right. Oh, you have mail, M’sieur. A letter and a package. They are here somewhere.” He rummaged about the chaos of bottomless chairs, empty boxes, and refuse of no description with which he had furnished his home. “Ah! Here they are. Just where I put them for safekeeping.”
Both the package and letter were from Maurice de Lhandes. While Pierre fortified himself with another draw at the bottle, Hel read Maurice’s note:
My Dear Friend:
I wadded up and threw away my first epistolary effort because it began with a phrase so melodramatic as to bring laughter to me and, I feared, embarrassment to you. And yet, I can find no other way to say what I want to say. So here is that sophomoric first phrase:
When you read this, Nicholai, I shall be dead.
(Pause here for my ghostly laughter and your compassionate embarrassment.)
There are many reasons I might cite for my close feelings for you, but these three will do. First: Like me, you have always given the governments and the companies reason for fear and concern. Second:
You were the last person, other than Estelle, to whom I spoke during my life. And third: Not only did you never make a point of my physical peculiarity, you also never overlooked it, or brutalized my sensibilities by talking about it man to man.
I am sending you a gift (which you have probably already opened, greedy pig). It is something that may one day be of benefit to you. Do you remember my telling you that I had something on the United States of America? Something so dramatic that it would make the Statue of Liberty fall back and offer you whatever orifice you choose to use? Well, here it is.
I have sent you only the photocopy; I have destroyed the originals. But the enemy will not know that I have destroyed them, and the enemy does not know that I am dead. (Remarkable how peculiar it is to write that in the present tense!)
They will have no way to know that the originals are not in my possession in the button-down mode; so, with a little histrionic skill on your part, you should be able to manipulate them as you will.
As you know, native intelligence has always saved me from the foolishness of believing in life after death. But there can be nuisance value after death—and that thought pleases me.
Please visit Estelle from time to time, and, make her feel desirable. And give my love to your magnificent Oriental.
With all amicable sentiments,
PS. Did I mention the other night during dinner that the morels did not have enough lemon juice? I should have.
Hel broke the string on the package and scanned the contents. Affidavits, photographs, records, all revealing the persons and governmental organizations involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and with the cover-up of certain aspects of that assassination. Particularly interesting were statements from a person identified as the Umbrella Man, from another called the Man on the Fire Escape, and a third, the Knoll Commando.
Hel nodded. Very strong leverage indeed.
* * *
After a simple meal of sausage, bread, and onion washed down with raw red wine in Pierre’s littered room, they took a walk together over the grounds, staying well away from the painful scar of the château. Evening was falling, wisps of salmon and mauve clouds piling up against the mountains.
Hel mentioned that he would be gone for several days, and they could begin the work of repair when he returned.
“You would trust me to do it, M’sieur? After how I have failed you?” Pierre was feeling self-pitying. He had decided that he might have protected the Madame better if he had been totally sober.
Hel changed the subject. “What can we expect for weather tomorrow, Pierre?”
The old man glanced listlessly at the sky, and he shrugged. “I don’t know, M’sieur. To tell you the truth, I cannot really read the weather. I only pretend, to make myself seem important.”
“But, Pierre, your predictions are unfailing. I rely on them, and they have served me well.”
Pierre frowned, trying to remember. “Is this so, M’sieur?”
“I wouldn’t dare go into the mountains without your advice.”
“Is this so?”
“I am’ convinced that it is a matter of wisdom, and age, and Basque blood. I may achieve the age in time, even the wisdom. But the Basque blood…” Hel sighed and struck at a shrub they were passing.
Pierre was silent for a time as he pondered this. Finally he said, “You know? I think that what you say is true, M’sieur. It is a gift, probably. Even I believe it is the signs in the sky, but in reality it is a gift—a skill that only my people enjoy. For instance, you see how the sheep of the sky have russet fleeces? Now, it is important to know that the moon is in a descending phase, and that birds were swooping low this morning. From this, I can tell with certainty that…”
The Church at Alos
Father Xavier’s head was bent, his fingers pressed against his temple, his hand partially masking the dim features of the old woman on the other side of the confessional’s wicker screen. It was an attitude of compassionate understanding that permitted him to think his own thoughts while the penitent droned on, recalling and admitting every little lapse, hoping to convince God, by the tiresome pettiness of her sins, that she was innocent of any significant wrongdoing. She had reached the point of confessing the sins of others—of asking forgiveness for not having been strong enough to prevent her husband from drinking, for having listened to the damning gossip of Madame Ibar, her neighbor, for permitting her son to miss Mass and join the hunt for boar instead.
Automatically humming an ascending interrogative note at each pause. Father Xavier’s mind was dealing with the problem of superstition. At Mass that morning, the itinerate priest had made use of an ancient superstition to gain their attention and to underline his message of faith and revolution. He himself was too well educated to believe in the primitive fears that characterize the faith of the mountain Basque; but as a soldier of Christ, he felt it his duty to grasp each weapon that came to hand and to strike a blow for the Church Militant. He knew the superstition that a clock striking during the Sagara (the elevation of the Host) was an infallible sign of imminent death. Setting a clock low beside the altar where he could see it, he had timed the Sagara to coincide with its striking of the hour. There had been an audible gasp in the congregation, followed by a profound silence. And taking his theme from the omen of impending death, he had told them it meant the death of repression against the Basque people, and the death of ungodly influences within the revolutionary movement. He had been satisfied with the effect, manifest in part by several invitations to take supper and to pass the night in the homes of local peasants, and in part by an uncommonly large turnout for evening confession—even several men, although only old men, to be sure.
Would this last woman never end her catalogue of trivial omissions? Evening was setting in, deepening the gloom of the ancient church, and he was feeling the pangs of hunger. Just before this self-pitying chatterbox had squeezed her bulk into the confessional, he had peeked out and discovered that she was the last of the penitents. He breathed a sigh and cut into her stream of petty flaws, calling her his daughter and telling her that Christ understood and forgave, and giving her a penance of many prayers, so she would feel important.
When she left the box, he sat back to give her time to leave the church. Undue haste in getting to a free dinner with wine would be unseemly. He was preparing to rise, when the curtain hissed and another penitent slipped into the shadows of the confessional.
Father Xavier sighed with impatience.
A very soft voice said, “You have only seconds to pray, Father.”
The priest strained to see through the screen into the shadows of the confessional, then he gasped. It was a figure with a bandage around its head, like the cloth tied under the chins of the dead to keep their mouths from gaping! A ghost?
Father Xavier, too well educated for superstition, pressed back away from the screen and held his crucifix before him. “Begone! I! Abi!”
The soft voice said, “Remember Beñat Le Cagot.”
“Who are you? What—”
The wicker screen split, and the point of Le Cagot’s makila plunged between the priest’s ribs, piercing his heart and pinning him to the wall of the confessional.
Never again would it be possible to shake the villager’s faith in the superstition of the Sagara, for it had proved itself. And in the months that followed, a new and colorful thread was woven into the folk myth of Le Cagot—he who had mysteriously vanished into the mountains, but who was rumored to appear suddenly whenever Basque freedom fighters needed him most. With a vengeful will of its own, Le Cagot’s makila had flown to the village of Alos and punished the perfidious priest who had informed on him.
Automatically humming an ascending interrogative note at each pause. Father Xavier’s mind was dealing with the problem of superstition. At Mass that morning, the itinerate priest had made use of an ancient superstition to gain their attention and to underline his message of faith and revolution. He himself was too well educated to believe in the primitive fears that characterize the faith of the mountain Basque; but as a soldier of Christ, he felt it his duty to grasp each weapon that came to hand and to strike a blow for the Church Militant. He knew the superstition that a clock striking during the Sagara (the elevation of the Host) was an infallible sign of imminent death. Setting a clock low beside the altar where he could see it, he had timed the Sagara to coincide with its striking of the hour. There had been an audible gasp in the congregation, followed by a profound silence. And taking his theme from the omen of impending death, he had told them it meant the death of repression against the Basque people, and the death of ungodly influences within the revolutionary movement. He had been satisfied with the effect, manifest in part by several invitations to take supper and to pass the night in the homes of local peasants, and in part by an uncommonly large turnout for evening confession—even several men, although only old men, to be sure.
Would this last woman never end her catalogue of trivial omissions? Evening was setting in, deepening the gloom of the ancient church, and he was feeling the pangs of hunger. Just before this self-pitying chatterbox had squeezed her bulk into the confessional, he had peeked out and discovered that she was the last of the penitents. He breathed a sigh and cut into her stream of petty flaws, calling her his daughter and telling her that Christ understood and forgave, and giving her a penance of many prayers, so she would feel important.
When she left the box, he sat back to give her time to leave the church. Undue haste in getting to a free dinner with wine would be unseemly. He was preparing to rise, when the curtain hissed and another penitent slipped into the shadows of the confessional.
Father Xavier sighed with impatience.
A very soft voice said, “You have only seconds to pray, Father.”
The priest strained to see through the screen into the shadows of the confessional, then he gasped. It was a figure with a bandage around its head, like the cloth tied under the chins of the dead to keep their mouths from gaping! A ghost?
Father Xavier, too well educated for superstition, pressed back away from the screen and held his crucifix before him. “Begone! I! Abi!”
The soft voice said, “Remember Beñat Le Cagot.”
“Who are you? What—”
The wicker screen split, and the point of Le Cagot’s makila plunged between the priest’s ribs, piercing his heart and pinning him to the wall of the confessional.
Never again would it be possible to shake the villager’s faith in the superstition of the Sagara, for it had proved itself. And in the months that followed, a new and colorful thread was woven into the folk myth of Le Cagot—he who had mysteriously vanished into the mountains, but who was rumored to appear suddenly whenever Basque freedom fighters needed him most. With a vengeful will of its own, Le Cagot’s makila had flown to the village of Alos and punished the perfidious priest who had informed on him.
New York
As he stood in the plush private elevator, mercifully without Musak, Hel moved his jaw gingerly from side to side. In the eight days he had been setting up this meeting, his body had mended well. The jaw was still stiff, but did not require the undignified gauze sling; his hands were tender, but the bandages were gone, as were the last yellowish traces of bruise on his forehead.
The elevator stopped and the door opened directly into an outer office, where a secretary rose and greeted him with an empty smile. “Mr. Hel? The Chairman will be with you soon. The other gentleman is waiting inside. Would you care to join him?” The secretary was a handsome young man with a silk shirt open to the middle of his chest and tight trousers of a soft fabric that revealed the bulge of his penis. He conducted Hel to an inner reception room decorated like the parlor of a comfortable rural home: overstuffed chairs in floral prints, lace curtains, a low tea table, two Lincoln rockers, bric-a-brac in a glass-front étagère, framed photographs of three generations of family on an upright piano.
The gentleman who rose from the plump sofa had Semitic features, but an Oxford accent. “Mr. Hel? I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. I am Mr. Able, and I represent OPEC interests in such matters as these.” There was an extra pressure to his handshake that hinted at his sexual orientation. “Do sit down, Mr. Hel. The Chairman will be with us soon. Something came up at the last moment, and she was called away briefly.”
Hel selected the least distasteful chair. “She?”
Mr. Able laughed musically. “Ah, you did not know that the Chairman was a woman?”
“No, I didn’t. Why isn’t she called the Chairwoman, or one of those ugly locutions with which Americans salve their social consciences at the sacrifice of euphony: chairperson, mailperson, freshperson—that sort of thing?”
“Ah, you will find the Chairman unbound by conventions. Having become one of the most powerful people in the world, she does not have to seek recognition; and achieving equality would, for her, be a great step down.” Mr. Able smiled and tilted his head coquettishly. “You know, Mr. Hel, I learned a great deal about you before Ma summoned me to this meeting.”
“Ma?”
“Everyone close to the Chairman calls her Ma. Sort of a family joke. Head of the Mother Company, don’t you see?”
“I do see, yes.”
The door to the outer office opened, and a muscular young man with a magnificent suntan and curly golden hair entered carrying a tray.
“Just set it down here,” Mr. Able told him. Then to Hel he said, “Ma will doubtless ask me to pour.”
The handsome beachboy left after setting out the tea things, thick, cheap china in a blue-willow pattern.
Mr. Able noticed Hel’s glance at the china. “I know what you’re thinking. Ma prefers things to be what she calls ‘homey.’ I learned about your colorful background, Mr. Hel, at a briefing session a while ago. Of course I never expected to meet you—not after Mr. Diamond’s report of your death. Please believe that I regret what the Mother Company special police did to your home. I consider it unpardonable barbarism.”
“Do you?” Hel was impatient with the delay, and he had no desire to pass the time chatting with this Arab. He rose and crossed to the piano with its row of family photographs.
At this moment, the door to the inner office opened, and the Chairman entered.
Mr. Able rose quickly to his feet. “Mrs. Perkins, may I introduce Nicholai Hel?”
She took Hel’s hand and pressed it warmly between her plump, stubby fingers. “Land sakes, Mr. Hel, you just couldn’t know how I have looked forward to meeting you.” Mrs. Perkins was a chubby woman in her mid-fifties. Clear maternal eyes, neck concealed beneath layers of chin, gray hair done up in a bun, with wisps that had escaped the net chignon, pigeon-breasted, plump forearms with deeply dimpled elbows, wearing a silk dress of purple paisley. “I see that you’re looking at my family. My pride and joy, I always call them. That’s my grandson there. Rascally little fella. And this is Mr. Perkins. Wonderful man. Cordon-bleu cook and just a magician with flowers.” She smiled at her photographs and shook her head with proprietary affection. “Well, maybe we should turn to our business. Do you like tea, Mr. Hel?” She lowered herself into a Lincoln rocker with a puff of sigh. “I don’t know what I’d do without my tea.”
“Have you looked at the information I forwarded to you, Mrs. Perkins?” He lifted his hand to Mr. Able, indicating that he would forego a cup of tea made from tea bags.
The Chairman leaned forward and placed her hand on Hel’s arm. “Why don’t you just call me Ma? Everyone does.”
“Have you looked at the information, Mrs. Perkins?”
The warm smile disappeared from her face and her voice became almost metallic. “I have.”
“You will recall that I made a precondition to our talk your promise that Mr. Diamond be kept ignorant of the fact that I am alive.”
“I accepted that precondition.” She glanced quickly at Mr. Able. “The contents of Mr. Hel’s communication are eyes-only for me. You’ll have to follow my lead in this.”
“Certainly, Ma.”
“And?” Hel asked.
“I won’t pretend that you do not have us in a tight spot, Mr. Hel. For a variety of reasons, we would not care to have things upset just now, when our Congress is dismantling that Cracker’s energy bill. If I understand the situation correctly, we would be ill-advised to take counteraction against you, as that would precipitate the information into the European press. It is currently in the hands of an individual whom Fat Boy identifies as the Gnome. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“So it’s all a matter of price, Mr. Hel. What is your price?”
“Several things. First, you have taken some land in Wyoming from me. I want it back.”
The Chairman waved a pudgy hand at so trivial a matter.
“And I shall require that your subsidiaries stop all strip-mining in a radius of three hundred miles from my land.”
Mrs. Perkins’s jaw worked with controlled anger, her cold eyes fixed on Hel. Then she blinked twice and said, “All right.”
“Second, there is money of mine taken from my Swiss account.”
“Of course. Of course. Is that all?”
“No. I recognize that you could undo any of these actions at will. So I shall have to leave this leverage information on line for an indefinite period. If you offend me in any way, the button will be released.”
“I see. Fat Boy informs me that this Gnome person is in poor health.”
“I have heard that rumor.”
“You realize that if he should die, your protection is gone?”
“Not exactly, Mrs. Perkins. Not only would he have to die, but your people would have to be sure he was dead. And I happen to know that you have never located him and don’t have even an idea of his physical appearance. I suspect that you will intensify your search for the Gnome, but I’m gambling that he is hidden away where you will never find him.”
“We shall see. You have no further demands upon us?”
“I have further demands. Your people destroyed my home. It may not be possible to repair it, as there no longer are craftsmen of the quality that built it. But I intend to try.”
“How much?”
“Four million.”
“No house is worth four million dollars!”
“It’s now five million.”
“My dear boy, I started my professional career with less than a quarter of that, and if you think—”
“Six million.”
Mrs. Perkins’s mouth snapped shut. There was absolute silence, as Mr. Able nervously directed his glance away from the pair looking at one another across the tea table, one with a cold fixed stare, the other with lids half-lowered over smiling green eyes.
Mrs. Perkins drew a slow, calming breath. “Very well. But that, I suggest, had better be the last of your demands.”
“In point of fact, it is not.”
“Your price has reached its market maximum. There is a limit to the degree to which what is good for the Mother Company is good for America.”
“I believe, Mrs. Perkins, that you’ll be pleased by my last demand. If your Mr. Diamond had done his work competently, if he had not allowed personal enmity for me to interfere with his judgment, you would not now be facing this predicament. My last demand is this: I want Diamond. And I want the CIA gunny named Starr, and that PLO goatherd you call Mr. Haman. Don’t think of it as additional payment. I am rendering you a service—meting out punishment for incompetence.”
“And that is your last demand?”
“That is my last demand.”
The Chairman turned to Mr. Able. “How have your people taken the death of the Septembrists in that plane accident?”
“Thus far, they believe it was just that, an accident. We have not informed them that it was an assassination. We were awaiting your instructions, Ma.”
“I see. This Mr. Haman… he is related to the leader of the PLO movement, I believe.”
“That is true, Ma.”
“How will his death go down?”
Mr. Able considered this for a moment. “We may have to make concessions again. But I believe it can be handled.”
Mrs. Perkins turned again to Hel. She stared at him for several seconds. “Done.”
He nodded. “Here is how it will be set up. You will show Diamond the information now in your hands concerning the Kennedy assassination. You will tell him you have a line on the Gnome, and you can trust no one but him to kill the Gnome and secure the originals. He will realize how dangerous it would be to have other eyes than his see this material. You will instruct Diamond to go to the Spanish Basque village of Oñate. He will be contacted by a guide who will take them into the mountains, where they will find the Gnome. I shall take it from there. One other thing… and this is most important. I want all three of them to be well armed when they go into the mountains.”
“Did you get that?” she asked Mr. Able, her eyes never leaving Hel’s face.
“Yes, Ma.”
She nodded. Then her stern expression dissolved and she smiled, wagging a finger at Hel. “You’re quite a fellow, young man. A real horse trader. You would have gone a long way in the commercial world. You’ve got the makings of a real fine businessman.”
“I’ll overlook that insult.”
Mrs. Perkins laughed, her wattles jiggling. “I’d love to have a good long gabfest with you, son, but there are folks waiting for me in another office. We’ve got a problem with some kids demonstrating against one of our atomic-power plants. Young people just aren’t what they used to be, but I love them all the same, the little devils.” She pushed herself out of the rocker. “Lord, isn’t it true what they say: woman’s work is never done.”
The elevator stopped and the door opened directly into an outer office, where a secretary rose and greeted him with an empty smile. “Mr. Hel? The Chairman will be with you soon. The other gentleman is waiting inside. Would you care to join him?” The secretary was a handsome young man with a silk shirt open to the middle of his chest and tight trousers of a soft fabric that revealed the bulge of his penis. He conducted Hel to an inner reception room decorated like the parlor of a comfortable rural home: overstuffed chairs in floral prints, lace curtains, a low tea table, two Lincoln rockers, bric-a-brac in a glass-front étagère, framed photographs of three generations of family on an upright piano.
The gentleman who rose from the plump sofa had Semitic features, but an Oxford accent. “Mr. Hel? I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. I am Mr. Able, and I represent OPEC interests in such matters as these.” There was an extra pressure to his handshake that hinted at his sexual orientation. “Do sit down, Mr. Hel. The Chairman will be with us soon. Something came up at the last moment, and she was called away briefly.”
Hel selected the least distasteful chair. “She?”
Mr. Able laughed musically. “Ah, you did not know that the Chairman was a woman?”
“No, I didn’t. Why isn’t she called the Chairwoman, or one of those ugly locutions with which Americans salve their social consciences at the sacrifice of euphony: chairperson, mailperson, freshperson—that sort of thing?”
“Ah, you will find the Chairman unbound by conventions. Having become one of the most powerful people in the world, she does not have to seek recognition; and achieving equality would, for her, be a great step down.” Mr. Able smiled and tilted his head coquettishly. “You know, Mr. Hel, I learned a great deal about you before Ma summoned me to this meeting.”
“Ma?”
“Everyone close to the Chairman calls her Ma. Sort of a family joke. Head of the Mother Company, don’t you see?”
“I do see, yes.”
The door to the outer office opened, and a muscular young man with a magnificent suntan and curly golden hair entered carrying a tray.
“Just set it down here,” Mr. Able told him. Then to Hel he said, “Ma will doubtless ask me to pour.”
The handsome beachboy left after setting out the tea things, thick, cheap china in a blue-willow pattern.
Mr. Able noticed Hel’s glance at the china. “I know what you’re thinking. Ma prefers things to be what she calls ‘homey.’ I learned about your colorful background, Mr. Hel, at a briefing session a while ago. Of course I never expected to meet you—not after Mr. Diamond’s report of your death. Please believe that I regret what the Mother Company special police did to your home. I consider it unpardonable barbarism.”
“Do you?” Hel was impatient with the delay, and he had no desire to pass the time chatting with this Arab. He rose and crossed to the piano with its row of family photographs.
At this moment, the door to the inner office opened, and the Chairman entered.
Mr. Able rose quickly to his feet. “Mrs. Perkins, may I introduce Nicholai Hel?”
She took Hel’s hand and pressed it warmly between her plump, stubby fingers. “Land sakes, Mr. Hel, you just couldn’t know how I have looked forward to meeting you.” Mrs. Perkins was a chubby woman in her mid-fifties. Clear maternal eyes, neck concealed beneath layers of chin, gray hair done up in a bun, with wisps that had escaped the net chignon, pigeon-breasted, plump forearms with deeply dimpled elbows, wearing a silk dress of purple paisley. “I see that you’re looking at my family. My pride and joy, I always call them. That’s my grandson there. Rascally little fella. And this is Mr. Perkins. Wonderful man. Cordon-bleu cook and just a magician with flowers.” She smiled at her photographs and shook her head with proprietary affection. “Well, maybe we should turn to our business. Do you like tea, Mr. Hel?” She lowered herself into a Lincoln rocker with a puff of sigh. “I don’t know what I’d do without my tea.”
“Have you looked at the information I forwarded to you, Mrs. Perkins?” He lifted his hand to Mr. Able, indicating that he would forego a cup of tea made from tea bags.
The Chairman leaned forward and placed her hand on Hel’s arm. “Why don’t you just call me Ma? Everyone does.”
“Have you looked at the information, Mrs. Perkins?”
The warm smile disappeared from her face and her voice became almost metallic. “I have.”
“You will recall that I made a precondition to our talk your promise that Mr. Diamond be kept ignorant of the fact that I am alive.”
“I accepted that precondition.” She glanced quickly at Mr. Able. “The contents of Mr. Hel’s communication are eyes-only for me. You’ll have to follow my lead in this.”
“Certainly, Ma.”
“And?” Hel asked.
“I won’t pretend that you do not have us in a tight spot, Mr. Hel. For a variety of reasons, we would not care to have things upset just now, when our Congress is dismantling that Cracker’s energy bill. If I understand the situation correctly, we would be ill-advised to take counteraction against you, as that would precipitate the information into the European press. It is currently in the hands of an individual whom Fat Boy identifies as the Gnome. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“So it’s all a matter of price, Mr. Hel. What is your price?”
“Several things. First, you have taken some land in Wyoming from me. I want it back.”
The Chairman waved a pudgy hand at so trivial a matter.
“And I shall require that your subsidiaries stop all strip-mining in a radius of three hundred miles from my land.”
Mrs. Perkins’s jaw worked with controlled anger, her cold eyes fixed on Hel. Then she blinked twice and said, “All right.”
“Second, there is money of mine taken from my Swiss account.”
“Of course. Of course. Is that all?”
“No. I recognize that you could undo any of these actions at will. So I shall have to leave this leverage information on line for an indefinite period. If you offend me in any way, the button will be released.”
“I see. Fat Boy informs me that this Gnome person is in poor health.”
“I have heard that rumor.”
“You realize that if he should die, your protection is gone?”
“Not exactly, Mrs. Perkins. Not only would he have to die, but your people would have to be sure he was dead. And I happen to know that you have never located him and don’t have even an idea of his physical appearance. I suspect that you will intensify your search for the Gnome, but I’m gambling that he is hidden away where you will never find him.”
“We shall see. You have no further demands upon us?”
“I have further demands. Your people destroyed my home. It may not be possible to repair it, as there no longer are craftsmen of the quality that built it. But I intend to try.”
“How much?”
“Four million.”
“No house is worth four million dollars!”
“It’s now five million.”
“My dear boy, I started my professional career with less than a quarter of that, and if you think—”
“Six million.”
Mrs. Perkins’s mouth snapped shut. There was absolute silence, as Mr. Able nervously directed his glance away from the pair looking at one another across the tea table, one with a cold fixed stare, the other with lids half-lowered over smiling green eyes.
Mrs. Perkins drew a slow, calming breath. “Very well. But that, I suggest, had better be the last of your demands.”
“In point of fact, it is not.”
“Your price has reached its market maximum. There is a limit to the degree to which what is good for the Mother Company is good for America.”
“I believe, Mrs. Perkins, that you’ll be pleased by my last demand. If your Mr. Diamond had done his work competently, if he had not allowed personal enmity for me to interfere with his judgment, you would not now be facing this predicament. My last demand is this: I want Diamond. And I want the CIA gunny named Starr, and that PLO goatherd you call Mr. Haman. Don’t think of it as additional payment. I am rendering you a service—meting out punishment for incompetence.”
“And that is your last demand?”
“That is my last demand.”
The Chairman turned to Mr. Able. “How have your people taken the death of the Septembrists in that plane accident?”
“Thus far, they believe it was just that, an accident. We have not informed them that it was an assassination. We were awaiting your instructions, Ma.”
“I see. This Mr. Haman… he is related to the leader of the PLO movement, I believe.”
“That is true, Ma.”
“How will his death go down?”
Mr. Able considered this for a moment. “We may have to make concessions again. But I believe it can be handled.”
Mrs. Perkins turned again to Hel. She stared at him for several seconds. “Done.”
He nodded. “Here is how it will be set up. You will show Diamond the information now in your hands concerning the Kennedy assassination. You will tell him you have a line on the Gnome, and you can trust no one but him to kill the Gnome and secure the originals. He will realize how dangerous it would be to have other eyes than his see this material. You will instruct Diamond to go to the Spanish Basque village of Oñate. He will be contacted by a guide who will take them into the mountains, where they will find the Gnome. I shall take it from there. One other thing… and this is most important. I want all three of them to be well armed when they go into the mountains.”
“Did you get that?” she asked Mr. Able, her eyes never leaving Hel’s face.
“Yes, Ma.”
She nodded. Then her stern expression dissolved and she smiled, wagging a finger at Hel. “You’re quite a fellow, young man. A real horse trader. You would have gone a long way in the commercial world. You’ve got the makings of a real fine businessman.”
“I’ll overlook that insult.”
Mrs. Perkins laughed, her wattles jiggling. “I’d love to have a good long gabfest with you, son, but there are folks waiting for me in another office. We’ve got a problem with some kids demonstrating against one of our atomic-power plants. Young people just aren’t what they used to be, but I love them all the same, the little devils.” She pushed herself out of the rocker. “Lord, isn’t it true what they say: woman’s work is never done.”
Gouffre Field/Col. Pierre St. Martin
In addition to being exasperated and physically worn, Diamond was stung with the feeling that he looked foolish, stumbling through this blinding fog, clinging obediently to a length of rope tied to the waist of his guide whose ghostly figure he could only occasionally make out, not ten feet ahead. A rope around Diamond’s waist strung back into the brilliant mist, where its knotted end was grasped by Starr; and the Texan in turn was linked to the PLO trainee Haman, who complained each time they rested for a moment, sitting on the damp boulders of the high col. The Arab was not used to hours of heavy exercise; his new climbing boots were chafing his ankles, and the muscles of his forearm were throbbing with the strain of his white-knuckled grip on the line that linked him to the others, terrified of losing contact and being alone and blind in this barren terrain. This was not at all what he had had in mind when he had postured before the mirror of his room in Oñate two days earlier, cutting a romantic figure with his mountain clothes and boots, a heavy Magnum in the holster at his side. He had even practiced drawing the weapon as quickly as he could, admiring the hard-eyed professional in the mirror. He recalled how excited he had been in that mountain meadow a month before, emptying his gun into the jerking body of that Jewess after Starr had killed her.
As annoying as any physical discomfort to Diamond was the wiry old guide’s constant humming and singing as he led them slowly along, skirting the rims of countless deep pits filled with dense vapor, the danger of which the guide had made evident through extravagant mime not untouched with gallows humor as he opened his mouth and eyes wide and nailed his arms about in imitation of a man falling to his death, then pressed his palms together in prayer and rolled his impish eyes upward. Not only did the nasal whine of the Basque songs erode Diamond’s patience, but the voice seemed to come from everywhere at once, because of the peculiar underwater effect of a whiteout.
Diamond had tried to ask the guide how much longer they would be groping through this soup, how much farther it was to where the Gnome was hiding out. But the only response was a grin and a nod. When they were turned over to the guide in the mountains by a Spanish Basque who had contacted them in the village, Diamond had asked if he could speak English, and the little old man had grinned and said, “A lee-tle bit.” When, some time later, Diamond had asked how long it would be before they arrived at their destination, the guide had answered, “A lee-tle bit.” That was an odd-enough response to cause Diamond to ask the guide his name. “A lee-tle bit.”
As annoying as any physical discomfort to Diamond was the wiry old guide’s constant humming and singing as he led them slowly along, skirting the rims of countless deep pits filled with dense vapor, the danger of which the guide had made evident through extravagant mime not untouched with gallows humor as he opened his mouth and eyes wide and nailed his arms about in imitation of a man falling to his death, then pressed his palms together in prayer and rolled his impish eyes upward. Not only did the nasal whine of the Basque songs erode Diamond’s patience, but the voice seemed to come from everywhere at once, because of the peculiar underwater effect of a whiteout.
Diamond had tried to ask the guide how much longer they would be groping through this soup, how much farther it was to where the Gnome was hiding out. But the only response was a grin and a nod. When they were turned over to the guide in the mountains by a Spanish Basque who had contacted them in the village, Diamond had asked if he could speak English, and the little old man had grinned and said, “A lee-tle bit.” When, some time later, Diamond had asked how long it would be before they arrived at their destination, the guide had answered, “A lee-tle bit.” That was an odd-enough response to cause Diamond to ask the guide his name. “A lee-tle bit.”