The Pearl Thief

by Fiona McIntosh

  They were interrupted by a street seller offering tiny brooches of rosemary, its slightly antiseptic fragrance reaching him. Daniel didn’t want any but the thin, round-eyed child standing next to the seller, holding the lead of a puppy with its ribs outlined, prompted him to reach into his pocket and hand over some centimes. He waved away the rosemary. ‘Sell it over again,’ he said with a smile. The trio moved on, shooed away by the waiter arriving with their drinks and the bill.

  ‘That was kind,’ she remarked.

  ‘The child is probably trained to steal my wallet but how can we not give a few coins?’

  She nodded as if mentally tucking away his gesture. Did she see it as a weakness, he wondered? ‘You haven’t told me why this café is such a regular for you,’ she reminded.

  He sipped the chocolate; it was dark and thick, heavy enough to settle in his belly to warm it and stop any stray rumbles. ‘Oh, that’s good,’ he admitted, watching her remove her gloves so long fingers could clasp her cup and be warmed.

  ‘This was the café where the lady spy first met her colonel.’

  It was perhaps the first time since they’d introduced themselves that he’d genuinely surprised her. A look of pleasure skipped across her features; there was a sparkling in her eyes and her mouth began to crinkle towards a full, broad grin but was held back by a caution of disbelief. ‘Are you fibbing, Daniel?’

  He reacted with a look of injury, putting his hot chocolate down and raising palms to his chest in a show of surprise. ‘No! Why would I?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. You’re secretive. You share but it’s often about trivia so you can hold back what you don’t wish to share.’ He watched her and she shrugged. ‘An observation. I think you’re a clever charmer.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ He frowned.

  ‘It could be taken as a compliment, of course.’

  ‘And yet you don’t mean it in that way.’

  ‘Daniel, I’ve mentioned I’m suspicious of everyone – I’ve taught myself to never take someone at face value. That includes you.’

  ‘Have I given cause to doubt?’

  She didn’t reply immediately. ‘I do recall slipping on the ice now in the park but it wasn’t you who assisted me. It was an older gentleman.’

  He forced himself not to swallow; not to lower his gaze with guilt, or to so much as blink at what was clearly an accusation. But his silence damned him. He should have made some sound of vexation.

  She took a second drink from her cup and drained it. ‘It doesn’t matter; I’ve enjoyed your generous company. But I should be going,’ she sighed.

  She deserved the truth. He’d never thought himself capable of giving it to anyone but the accusation felt like a blow to the belly, even though she was avoiding using the harsh word of ‘liar’. It winded him to think this was the notion she would take away from their time together.

  She made a move to stand but he leapt in, hardly daring to believe what was rushing to his lips. ‘I’ll tell you the truth if you won’t leave me yet.’

  Her gaze had a razor’s edge when it cut back to him. Gone was all humour. The days of progress were now dormant while the fortress quickly rebuilt itself around her.

  ‘Please, sit,’ he urged.

  She didn’t waste words protesting, or energy remaining standing. Her angular frame folded neatly back into the small café chair and the waiter was back.

  ‘Again, please,’ Daniel said, simply to be rid of the fellow.

  ‘Have you been lying to me since we met?’

  He wanted to look away from that searching gaze with its strange eye that surely haunted anyone who made contact with it. ‘I haven’t given you all the truth,’ he sidestepped. He saw the low, long intake of breath in the swell of her chest beneath the coat as she tamed her disgust. ‘You and I are not so different.’

  ‘Is that so?’ she jabbed. ‘Except I gave you my hardest truths.’

  ‘And you deserve mine. I just don’t know where to begin.’

  ‘How about the beginning?’ she said, echoing his urging of their first meeting, but there was no smile.

  17

  Daniel had never felt as confronted as he did in this moment; it was akin to being made naked in public without warning and everyone turning to stare. He was about to speak what had never been uttered previously and all the physiological symptoms of shock were evident in his body, from the instantly dry mouth to the fluttering sensation in his belly.

  ‘Hard, isn’t it?’ she said, but not unkindly. ‘Let me help you. Us meeting wasn’t entirely a coincidence, was it?’

  How could this situation have gone so wrong so quickly? Just half an hour earlier they had been smiling together over goulash; they had become friends. Now she looked at him as though he were the enemy.

  ‘How long have you suspected?’

  She gave a customary lift of her angular shoulder. ‘Perhaps from the moment we met. I wanted to believe you. It’s not that I don’t trust your good intentions; you’ve been generous and found me in the most vulnerable moment when I think I needed to be listened to. But you didn’t find me in that moment, did you?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I think you contrived to meet me on that garden bench and what I obviously want to know is why. It’s not for romantic reasons because I might have seen a sign of that by now. But let me continue to be honest, even though you haven’t been. It was the memory of slipping that made me realise you hadn’t been truthful because I do pride myself on being observant.’

  He was surprised by how embarrassed the admission of guilt made him feel. He dropped his gaze. ‘Our meeting in the gardens was orchestrated.’

  Katerina looked disappointed to hear it, as though she’d genuinely hoped her presumption was wrong.

  ‘I’m sorry to let you down,’ he admitted. ‘I didn’t know you a few days ago. Now I think of you as a friend.’

  ‘Is that supposed to make it feel easier being lied to?’

  Daniel shook his head. ‘No, I’m just giving you the truth you want.’

  ‘How treacherous of you. I fought against instinct and decided I should trust you.’

  ‘You can trust me.’ He could hear the bleat in his voice.

  Katerina took time to light a cigarette. He watched in growing shame each graceful move of her hands until he heard the soft inhalation and waited for the funnel of pale smoke to escape from her mouth. He wanted to kiss that mouth in apology. He wanted to kiss her for his salvation. It sounded overwrought and yet no one but he could appreciate the epiphany of this moment; not only was he allowing someone else into his heart again but he was considering making bare his inner self, now that his exterior had been stripped away. She regarded him as if allowing him the time to wrestle with his thoughts and reach this conclusion.

  She took time for another two silent drags on her Pall Mall and then she bent the cigarette in the ashtray, crushing its embers as their second round of drinks arrived, the debris of the first removed. The waiter’s arrival and departure broke the tense spell.

  ‘All of it, then, or I walk away from you now, and if I do, we shall not speak again. I will no longer consider you a friend.’ He opened his mouth to assure her but she held up a slender finger like a schoolteacher. ‘If I sense a lie, Daniel, and I usually have a well-attuned radar for anyone who prevaricates, I shall get up and leave anyway and the terms remain the same. I don’t know what you’re up to, but you had better be honest with me now.’

  That single finger felt more terrifying than a blade aimed at his throat; not only did he need what she could give him but he needed her in his life now. He felt as though he could compare himself to a wandering man, lost, parched, who’d finally found the stream, the one that would slake his thirst and lead him out of the wilderness … As dramatic as he knew that image was, he couldn’t let her go.

  Without second-guessing it, he tumbled straight into his story, keeping it simple, unemotional, as his training had taught him.
r />   ‘Everything I told you about my family is true.’ He found his courage and looked at her intently.

  She gave a little nod that told him she accepted this and so he moved on with fresh confidence.

  ‘I started school at four, earlier than most, and there I met a frighteningly intelligent and mature girl. She was also starting early, so we felt like kindred spirits.’

  ‘What is her name?’

  He hesitated momentarily. ‘It was Ayla,’ he said in a voice that spoke her name aloud softly for the first time in two decades. It weakened him, but Katerina’s gaze urged him on.

  ‘Ayla and I became inseparable. I remember our parents joking that they might as well plan for our marriage now … we were probably seven by then.’

  Katerina’s expression lightened to share a sad smile with him.

  ‘My father urged hers to leave Czechoslovakia with us. Ayla and her brother were both enormously talented students; we could tell from as young as primary school that these two had so much academic potential. Her true gift, though, was music. She composed from eight but she was my equal in mathematics and barely tried.’ He gave a sigh. ‘She wasn’t enamoured by numbers as I am, though. As for her older brother, his ability with science was scary. He was destined to do something extraordinary in the field of physics, I feel sure. Because of Ezra – that’s her brother – their parents finally decided America was the best place to head to continue his education and explore his talents. Our application to Britain, in the meantime, came through swiftly. They began their application for emigration but the process took far longer than ours – longer than anyone could have anticipated.’

  He cleared his throat. ‘The borders were closed in 1941 before their visas were granted and then it became illegal; all were banned from leaving the country.’

  Katerina remained still and silent, forcing him to speak on.

  ‘The family was sent to Terezín in December 1941.’ He could all but hear the cogs of her mind turning in ghastly realisation and he nodded. ‘As you were escaping his clutch, my darling Ayla was entering it.’ He watched now as Katerina blanched. The anger that had sat like a barrier between them dissipated and he felt her sympathy reach across the table like an invisible hand and stroke his cheek.

  Her gaze was now all pity. ‘Daniel, I don’t know what to say.’ She sounded breathless.

  He shook his head. ‘Ruda Mayek was there, as you know, and he took a special interest in Ayla. She was not yet eighteen.’

  Now she did reach across the table and he felt the cool of those long fingers wrap around his hand and he trembled. ‘Excuse me,’ he murmured, and pretended to sneeze but they both knew he was catching tears before they fell. He had never cried for Ayla. His sadness had built like a poisonous boil beneath the surface and speaking about her had lanced it. He was glad they’d chosen the lonely seats outside.

  She didn’t seem discomfited by his emotion. ‘How do you know what occurred?’ She had taken his hand again.

  ‘Ezra survived Terezín. He never met Mayek, only saw him from a distance, and can’t remember him to describe him. He was sent to Auschwitz, and don’t ask me how, because I can’t imagine, but he survived that place of horror as well. I mean, he’s not the same – how can he be? He never did fulfil his potential. He eventually returned to academia, where I imagine it felt safe, and he lectures in physics these days at an American university to promising bright students who no doubt remind him of himself at that age.’ Daniel met her gaze. ‘He spoke only once of what occurred to his family and has refused to talk about them since. It seems your nemesis found many novel and brutal ways to humiliate a young woman on the cusp of life.’

  ‘He’s a psychopath.’

  ‘He’s the devil,’ Daniel added. ‘A monster that walks this earth in plain sight.’

  ‘Will you tell me the rest? I mean, how I fit into this story, apart from the obvious link.’

  ‘It’s the obvious link that binds us, Katerina. But I want to tell you all the truth so you cannot accuse me of holding back or lying to you. It won’t take long; there’s not much more other than to know that when I learned of Ayla’s death after the war, I couldn’t recover easily from the loss. We had been the closest of friends until the moment my family left Czechoslovakia. It was no longer our parents who plotted; it was she and I who spoke of marriage and we had made a promise that as soon as she turned sixteen we would be betrothed, and on the day following her seventeenth celebration we would be married. I, of course, left before those ages ticked around but we wrote to each other twice a week as long as our correspondence was getting through, and I think it was through those letters that our deep love for each other matured. It wasn’t just youthful admiration, or a crush, or even habit. No one understood me better than Ayla; no one laughed with me as she did or made me feel as invincible as she could. And I couldn’t save her. When I discovered how she suffered, something darkened within me and when I learned his name, nothing was ever going to stop me hunting him down and bringing him to justice.’

  ‘Do you mean justice as the world understands it?’

  He shook his head. ‘My justice.’

  ‘And would you be capable of that, Daniel – in the moment, staring at your victim? Could you end his life?’

  ‘That’s the other part I have yet to explain about myself.’ He paused; she waited with a parted mouth as though wanting to say more but not daring to. Again he felt the urge to kiss those neatly sculpted lips. ‘I am Mossad. It’s the national intelligence agency of Israel —’

  ‘I know what it is,’ she cut in.

  He nodded. ‘Former Mossad, I should say. I retired several years ago.’

  He watched dawning loosen her brow and slacken that tightly held pose. He had surprised her. That was the only positive.

  ‘You’ve been spying on me?’ The accusation cut through him like a hot blade. He had a fleeting memory of her curled up on his sofa, weeping, considering him a sort of safe island as she emptied her sorrows in front of him. She’d trusted him these past days but he sensed the inward snarl of an injured animal, cornered and turning on its hunter. ‘This has all been a lie?’ she continued. It was as though she was testing the notion, saying it aloud, trying to come to terms with his duplicity. ‘Why didn’t you just ask? Why the duplicity?’

  ‘You say that now, but you are the first to admit that you’re suspicious of all; that you keep yourself to yourself. I couldn’t risk frightening you off. So I had to tiptoe into your life.’

  She shocked him by standing. ‘Manners demand that I thank you for …’ She shook her head. ‘For what, I’m unsure. I don’t know how to give a name to what we’ve shared, but I regret it now. Not sharing anything with anyone has kept me strong and safe for years. I betrayed old instincts with you – I blame seeing the Pearls again.’

  ‘Katerina, I can be relied upon,’ he assured her.

  ‘Really? To tell more lies, do you mean?’ She looked around for observers. They were giving the customers inside some afternoon entertainment, as it would take only a dullard not to realise they were arguing.

  He stood, tense. ‘I’ll walk you home.’

  ‘And you’d know where that is?’

  Suddenly it mattered to him to be trustworthy in her eyes … to be important to her, like Dr Schäfer. He still needed to find out what had happened to the good doctor but for now he felt he had a hill to climb in terms of re-establishing his credibility. Only the truth would work from here on – and what did it matter? They were both chasing an identical and elusive shadow but he’d never been closer and he’d never had her power to fuel his hunt.

  ‘I do.’ He reeled off the address off rue Buffon that housed the original Natural History Museum of France. He might as well come clean. ‘I’ve followed you home only once and I know you like to arrive at the Louvre via the botanical gardens, skirting the labyrinth that is in your neighbourhood, and then you avoid the main humdrum of the streets by cutting across to the Luxembou
rg Gardens. I think you enjoy being in gardens even if they do take you a slightly, how can I say, zigzag route.’

  He felt obliged to forgive her the look of pain reflected in her astonishment.

  ‘How long has this been going on?’

  ‘Only since you returned from London,’ he admitted, anticipating the question and almost drowning her words, hoping the short timeframe might help his cause.

  ‘So all that talk of being in the gardens with a sense of wellbeing when you saw me, your daily ritual of waiting for me … all a fabrication?’ She didn’t wait for his answer. ‘Well, you’re good, Mr Spy, I have to admit it. For someone who prides herself on suspecting every new person she meets of having a negative agenda, you hoodwinked me. Your skills are exemplary.’

  Nothing in her bitter-sounding compliment made him think she would take another step by his side. And still he tried.

  ‘Katerina, I do believe you’re suddenly one aspect of my world that gives me hope.’ In spite of her anger he watched the frown trace across her forehead. ‘You know how it feels to be young and lose the people you most love and rely upon in the world. I don’t compare myself to your situation other than to say I lost the love of my life. And I have never recovered. For the first decade of that score of years Ayla and I were parted, I didn’t know her fate. For the past ten years I’ve lived with a poison inside that has blackened my view of the world. I haven’t opened myself up to companions, to romance, to friendship …’

  She dropped her gaze and he knew she likely felt a moment of sympathy for him.

  ‘Until now,’ he added, baring himself as though opening his chest for the blade to be plunged in. He fully expected it but he needed her to know that her arrival into it had changed his bleak world of the last twenty years.

  The observers watched on while Daniel noted her struggle to make her decision on his fate.

  Katerina finally looked up, ignoring the audience, and shivered as though only now realising how cold it was. The revelation about Daniel had clearly caught her normally reliable radar napping. He’d tricked her and she could recognise that it was a mix of annoyance and embarrassment that had prompted her brisk response. No damage had been done. The release of the toxic tale meant she had walked out of her apartment this morning feeling lighter of heart than she could recall. Yes, he had lied but not in order to romance her or to steal from her; he’d been respectful, kind, a very good listener, but she was still unaware of why he had pursued her and she couldn’t help but feel a prick of intrigue to know what he was up to. It was curiosity that provided room in her heart to give him another chance to impress her. Daniel had a big job ahead in convincing her he could be trusted, and he had no more than fifteen minutes walking back to her apartment in which to achieve that.