Krysalis: Krysalis

by John Tranhaile

  Anna stared at him. Her mouth fell open. In the split second before she could speak he raised a finger to his lips. “Speak … to … him,” he mouthed. And when she continued to stare at him, he snatched up her right hand to force the receiver against her mouth.

  “Anna … why don’t you answer!”

  “Hello.”

  Gerhard sat on the bed and held his head close. Anna’s breath stank, but this was life or death.

  “Oh thank God, thank God. What the hell’s going on? Are you all right? Anna? Anna!”

  “All righ …”

  “What?”

  “Must have … overslept.”

  “Darling, do you know what time it is?”

  Anna continued to stare at Gerhard as if she were a moron. “Sunday morning,” she whispered mechanically.

  “Sunday! It’s Monday! Monday morning, seven-fifteen. Anna, what is wrong with you?”

  She sat up and transferred her gaze to the alarm clock. She was struggling, Gerhard knew, to come to terms with the knowledge that she had lost an entire day. His face tightened.

  “I’m sorry … Monday, how silly. I was working till all hours last night.”

  “I phoned the house, no answer, I couldn’t sleep for worry … Anna? Darling, please talk to me!”

  “Tired, that’s all. Just very tired.”

  “I’ve left the seminar. Wait there until I come, we’ll get a doctor—”

  “Where … are … you?” Gerhard articulated soundlessly.

  “David … where are you?”

  “Still in Sussex. Anna, you’re ill. I’ll be back in a couple of hours, less.”

  Gerhard held up both hands and waved them frantically. Anna understood. “No. I don’t want—”

  “I love you.”

  “David! You mustn’t—” But she was talking across the purr of an empty line.

  She just sat there, staring vacantly. Then she threw back the duvet and slid out of bed. “Going to be sick …”

  She could make it to the bathroom only on her hands and knees, like an animal. Once there she began to retch; she seemed to be throwing up endless amounts of bile and she couldn’t stop. When Gerhard turned on the bidet’s cold-water tap she somehow slurped a drink. After she’d brought that up and drunk some more, the spasms began to abate.

  Gerhard threw open the cabinet. Aspirin. No, Alka-Seltzer. He found a packet and mixed it into a glass of water. Down it went.

  The one cogent, coherent fact that kept Gerhard thinking straight was that David would be home soon. They had time, but only a bit.

  Anna turned away from the basin, ever so slowly. “What are you doing here?” she asked suddenly.

  “I … I phoned you but you never answered. I came around, rang the bell, but I couldn’t make anyone hear. In the end I had to break in. Thank God you hadn’t set the burglar alarm.”

  As far as he could see, she accepted this. Her eyes unfocused again and she muttered, “Dreams …”

  “What?”

  When she did not reply he shook her. “What did you say?”

  “Terrible … dreams. Nightmares. Safe.” Gerhard’s skin turned cold. “What about the safe?”

  “Opened David’s safe … took papers. Must look. Now.”

  Gerhard tried to restrain her but she pushed him aside. “Now!”

  She made her way to the study, Gerhard following, and sat down in David’s swivel chair. She could not take her eyes off the electric-blue safe in its niche over by the window, but neither did she approach it.

  “Wrong place.”

  “What?”

  She seemed to know exactly where to go next. As if sleepwalking, scarcely aware of Gerhard’s presence, she led the way to the top of the house.

  Nothing matched in this cramped, untidy room. The chaise lounge was faded, the curtains too new-looking. the Singer sewing machine almost antique, the old, jumble-sale desk …

  Anna snatched open the desk’s bottom drawer and reached down.

  “It’s there.”

  She was holding a bulky spiral-bound file in a gray plastic cover. Gerhard looked over her shoulder. The rubric in the upper right-hand corner caught his eye, “Top Secret,” then, opposite, the typewritten formula “This is copy number … of seven copies” and somebody had written “5” in the blank space. And halfway down the page was the single word “Krysalis.” Just that.

  “Oh, Anna …” The file, the file! He had succeeded beyond all hope; elation burst into his bloodstream like the aftermath of fine champagne, he could scarcely formulate words. “What have you done?”

  His mind was working furiously now. He mustn’t let her see him rejoice. Anna must think he had come to help, that’s all.

  “Why should they do that?” She had begun to speak coherently at last. “Thieves … how did they find out about my precious drawer?”

  “Precious—”

  She gesticulated at the open drawer. “The one where I keep Juliet’s letters.”

  Gerhard looked down and saw a thin bundle of childishly addressed envelopes.

  “No, not thieves …” She was staring into the middle distance, still half in the real world and half not. Then suddenly knowledge must have flooded through her, for she cried, “Gerhard! You’ve got to help me. I’ve broken into David’s safe and I’ve got the papers. I stole them. I stole David’s file.”

  “You stole …?”

  “It must have been me. Help me.”

  “But the safe door was shut when we saw it a minute ago….”

  He couldn’t afford to have her go around confessing. She obviously didn’t understand anything of what had happened. He felt helpless. “Anna, listen to what I’m saying: how can you have done anything of the kind when the safe is still shut?”

  “That’s how I found it. Locked.”

  “But the papers …?”

  “That’s how I know it was me.” Her mouth slackened into a round 0 of horror; for a moment she could not speak. “In the dream … I saw myself do it. Me. A barrister.”

  Gerhard was aware of the minutes ticking by. How long now before David got home? What to do for the best? Nothing seemed to work. “I was afraid of something like this,” he muttered. “On Saturday, you were deeply, deeply distressed.”

  “Was I?”

  “You don’t remember?” Anna shook her head.

  “It only came out during the trance. I told you to forget everything, but I was very worried. The resentment you’d built up toward David …”

  “Gerhard, why did I do this?” She was obviously frightened. “How did I do it? Tell me. I don’t even know the combination to the safe.”

  “Why do you say it was you who opened it, then?”

  She spread her hands helplessly. “Who else could it have been?”

  “Burglars. Spies.”

  “They wouldn’t have put the papers here, they’d have taken them.”

  “Anna, are you sure you don’t know the combination?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Hang on to that, he told himself. There’s hope. “Then how can you say it was you who stole them?”

  “But I … I dreamed it all. I can see myself now. I heard this voice inside my head….”

  “You’ve been hearing voices?”

  The face she turned to him betrayed growing wonderment. “Yes.”

  While he was desperately thinking how to retrieve the situation, “Gerhard,” she said, “I think I’m going to be sick again.”

  She ran down to the toilet. Gerhard waited a moment; then he closed the door and, mindful of fingerprints, drew on his gloves.

  He sat down and read the file quickly. As he came to the bottom of the last page, he unconsciously allowed Krysalis to fall onto his thigh, feeling like a man who has heard Mozart for the first time, and recognized the voice of God, and known that life has changed.

  NATO’s General Situation Plan. A detailed description of where the forces were, in what strengths, able to call on what reserve
s. Inventories, capacities, lists …

  But there was more, much more. The second section of the file told the generals what to do with their lists, if war broke out. It specified targetings for warheads. Counterstrikes. Counterstrikes to counterstrikes. Deployments.

  Lescombe was planning the first phase of the next land war in Europe.

  And that was not all. The file disclosed a British assessment of America’s attitude toward her supposed allies. Contempt. Mistrust. A deep-rooted feeling that Europe was of scant importance, that its tin-pot armies could be relied on to do only the wrong thing at the wrong time and in the wrong way.

  Gerhard now knew why Barzel had been in such a funk.

  Footsteps in the passage. By the time Anna opened the door Gerhard had placed Krysalis on top of the desk and was staring out the window.

  “Oh, Anna, my Anna …” He gestured dolefully toward the file. “What have you done?”

  “But how could I have done it? I don’t even know the combination to the safe!”

  He thought he might go mad. He could not let this file go, not ever. It represented more than wealth, more than safety; if he could somehow hold on to Krysalis, that meant a new start abroad, new life. Somehow, anyhow, he had to neutralize Anna’s half memories.

  “The only possible explanation,” he said slowly, “is that it’s in your subconscious. Dreams, voices … does anyone know, suspect, that you might have this?”

  “Of course not!” His expression terrified her.

  “When will David be coming home? Christ, why didn’t I think of that before—when?”

  She darted a look at her watch. “Soon. Gerhard, I think it might be best if I went away for a while, what do you think?”

  He gaped at her. It was so exactly what he wanted her to do, and so much the very opposite of what he’d expected her to say, that for a moment he could only sit in silence. “Perhaps … but it’s a … a little difficult to just, well, run away from something like this,” he temporized.

  “Running away is the last thing I mean to do. But listen. I’m a barrister, I’ve done enough cases to know how these things work. People panic, because they talk first and think later. I’ve got a solicitor and tomorrow we’ll call him, I’ll make a statement, but the first, only thing I need is time!”

  “But … but wouldn’t that seem like running? To the police, I mean?”

  “You don’t understand. Look at me.”

  “Anna, I—”

  “No, just look at me.” She laid both palms against his chest. “I’m calm, yes?”

  Reluctantly he nodded. There was something terribly wrong with Anna but he couldn’t put his finger on it yet.

  “I’m a trained lawyer. You can’t tell me how things appear and don’t appear to the outside world, because I understand better than you do. Now. The first thing to face up to is that David doesn’t know anything about you. He doesn’t realize I’ve been in therapy, or why I went into therapy in the first place or anything about my problems. Right? Right!”

  He nodded again. At last he was beginning to understand. She was scared out of her wits, but determined not to show it. She wanted to run away, she had to run away … but first someone, an outsider, must provide her with corroboration of rational reasons for flight. Somebody had to give approval.

  “Maybe it was a mistake not to tell David,” she went on. “None of that matters. All that counts is that David doesn’t know!”

  He could not but admire her. She was talking it through calmly, like a true professional. All she needed now was gentle encouragement.

  “… If I’m going to save my marriage, we need to prepare David. Hearing everything at once could knock him out.”

  The time had come to test his theory. Oppose her. Force her to step up the argument. He drew a deep breath, “But if you let me talk to David …”

  “After nine years of marriage? Suddenly tell him I’ve been in therapy before and after I met him and he never knew about that, about you!”

  “He’d understand.”

  “No!” She clenched her fists and began to pound his chest. “He wouldn’t! Gerhard, I live with that man and I’m telling you, he would not. So I have to go. Just for a day, maybe two, while we sort out what to do.”

  “But you’ll be incriminating yourself!”

  “You must keep a sense of proportion. This is serious, but not a major crisis. The file hasn’t disappeared, it’s there, on the desk. David knows that I was thinking of taking a few days abroad; he won’t be totally surprised to find me gone.”

  It was working. Don’t stop, he told himself. “But, Anna, he’s bound to call the police when he finds the file out of the safe.”

  “Of course.”

  “They’ll discover your fingerprints on it, they’ll assume you’ve taken a copy.”

  They argued it back and forth for ages, but Gerhard forced himself to ignore the passage of time, knowing that this could not be rushed, that every long minute spent reasoning with Anna was an investment in his own, uncertain future. All the while his brain kept leaping two, three moves ahead, anticipating how to meet his objections and overcome them, until at last Anna found the words that signalled she was ready.

  “Gerhard,” she said, “Gerhard, do just think for a moment. Think! All these things are true whether we call the police ourselves, now, or David does it later. They’ve only got my word for it that I opened the safe last night, not weeks ago. Forty-eight hours won’t make the slightest difference to either the file or my chances in a criminal court. But they could just save my marriage.”

  He hesitated, pretending to consider. Suddenly Anna surprised him by saying, “I know what you’re thinking.”

  Stricken, he raised his head and stared at her.

  “You want me to wipe my fingerprints off the file and the safe, don’t you? Then there’d be nothing to connect me with either of them. I could just say I came down to find the file lying on top of the safe.”

  Gerhard swallowed. It was perfect, so perfect that he couldn’t think of a way to knock it down.

  “No.” She shook her head with a smile. “I couldn’t do it.”

  “Why?”

  “First, I’d trip myself up. I’m not a good liar. And second, if they believed me, it would mean that David had been almost unbelievably careless. Mean the end of his career. My fault. Do you think I could live with that?”

  He was tempted to tell her that since Saturday’s hypnosis session he already knew how to open the safe, that they could put the file back and no one would know. But he had to have that file.

  “There’s another reason why I have to come clean, eventually,” Anna said, and he looked at her fearfully, as if she really could read his mind.

  “What?”

  “You’re assuming this file was the only thing in the safe. I don’t know what David kept in there. Suppose there were other papers, I’ve taken those as well, hidden them somewhere else?”

  “I have to think.” Gerhard began to stride around the room. At last he came to rest by the window and stood there looking out over the square. Muscles twitched beneath the skin of his face, turning it into a restless sea of anger. Now it came down to it, he genuinely did not know what to do.

  Anyone with Anna’s best interests at heart would persuade her to stay, be utterly frank, and face the music. But what about him, his best interests?

  There’d be interrogation. She’d tell them about the sixteen years of on-and-off psychotherapy. In other words, about him. Then, suppose she admitted to hearing voices, a voice? What if, under someone’s hypnosis, she identified that voice?

  She wanted to run away. She’d persuaded herself that that was the only course. It was pointless to try and influence her further. A few moments ago he’d felt he was facing disaster. But now he thought that fortune might be presenting him with the kind of once-in-a-lifetime prize that leaves a man breathless. If only he could stay cool enough to plan the next move….

  He became awar
e that Anna had stopped speaking and was looking at him expectantly. He dithered a moment.

  It was the need in her eyes that finally decided him. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s best if you get away for a while. But I’m not taking you to Hampstead.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if they find you there—and by God! but they’ll be looking hard—they can take you on the spot, won’t even need a warrant. Abroad’s different. And didn’t you say you were planning a trip to … where was it, Paris? So that would be the first place he’d think you’d gone…. I have a villa in Greece. They won’t find you there, not easily.” His voice had grown steadily more decisive, until at this point he was all but issuing orders. “And I can treat you, while I prepare a report on your mental condition.”

  “That makes sense to me. If you set everything out, the … the history …”

  “Give David a chance to adjust, without pressure.”

  She smiled at him. For the first time he noticed a tic at the corner of her mouth. “I knew you’d understand.”

  “I want you to think back. Who knows about us? Who could trace you, through me?”

  “No one.”

  “Think. Of course there’s someone—who first referred you to me?”

  “My doctor. But that was years ago, he’s dead.”

  “There’d be no record of your consulting me since that time, because you never had another referral. Is there anything informal, say a diary entry, a—”

  “Nothing. I never told anyone about us.”

  “Except Robyn.”

  “She’s in America. I haven’t seen her for two years.”

  “All right. Now listen. I want you to get your things together …”

  Gerhard looked at his watch. Nearly nine o’clock, shit! It seemed ages before Anna came back upstairs, carrying a suitcase.

  “Do you have your passport?” he asked her.

  “In the study.”

  “Let’s get it.”

  “The file …?”

  He picked it up from the desk. “I’ll leave it on top of the safe.” Wonderful, he thought, how convincingly a man can lie when he has to. “Here, give me that case. And for God’s sake, hurry!”

  They’d got as far as the door to the second story study, when down below they heard keys jangle on the pavement, followed by the sound of one being inserted in the lock.