Krysalis: Krysalis

by John Tranhaile

  “Gerhard.” Her voice suddenly turned hoarse, as if all her saliva had dried up. “Tell me the truth. Please. Am I going insane?”

  He laughed. “Good God, no. Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “I can’t remember anything about today. You … you really talked to David?”

  “Yes. I had to. It’s utterly inconceivable that I should bring you here without his consent.”

  “What did you … I mean, did you tell him anything?”

  “Only what was necessary for professional purposes. Your taking the file, of course.”

  Anna made a strange sound, halfway between a groan and a croak, but by now Gerhard was too far in to retreat.

  “I had to tell him that, when I gave Krysalis back to him. I didn’t attempt to cover your entire history, but he did understand what you needed to be cured.”

  She banged the arms of her chair and cried, “Why can’t I remember? Why! There’s this voice inside my head …”

  “Voice?”

  “More than one. Telling me such strange things … I think one of them’s David’s … yes, maybe he did say that I needed a holiday, I’m almost sure … David

  knows?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did he take it?”

  “Very well. I’d say that, of the three of us, he was the keenest on your going abroad while he and I sort things out.”

  “I must phone him. Talk to him.”

  “Certainly you must, it’s essential.” Oh dear God, he thought frantically, no, don’t worry, keep going! “But it’s far too late for that this evening.”

  Gerhard watched her closely. Had the suggestions that he had hypnotically implanted in the course of their journey taken root? He couldn’t dare let her go, now. “How much of today can you actually remember?” he asked casually.

  Anna made a great effort. “I remember… oh, I don’t know … a ship?”

  “That’s it. We drove out through Dover.” Anna asleep on the back seat, lax passport officers, harassed by thousands of tourists passing through every day, yes, Dover had been an inspiration. “And the flight here?”

  “No.”

  Once in France, he’d chartered a plane, which had cost him the earth, although from the moment he’d opened the Krysalis file he’d seen a way of doing far more than just covering his expenses. His plan was so ambitious that at times it made his stomach churn, but he’d committed himself to it and now he thought of how much, of how everything depended on keeping this woman quiet….

  “Gerhard, did you say … I’d had a breakdown?”

  He nodded heavily. “I’m afraid so. A very serious one. As David was quick to appreciate, what you need now, more than anything, is rest.”

  “But … my work.”

  “You’d already arranged to take a few days off, remember? David will see to that side of things. And he’ll be coming here at the weekend.”

  “He will?” She eyed him anxiously, wanting to believe his reassurances.

  “Yes. It’s Monday now, so it sounds a long time, but if you rest and don’t worry, it’ll pass quickly, you’ll see.”

  “Is he angry with me?”

  “Not at all. Just concerned for your welfare.”

  “I always wanted to tell him about you,” she said, after a pause. “Right from the start.” Some of the lines had been smoothed away from her face; she looked less troubled. “If only you hadn’t—”

  “Ah, yes, well, plenty of time for that tomorrow. Now, shall we go in? I can’t hypnotize you out here, and I think that would do you good, don’t you?”

  To his immense relief, she nodded; if she’d refused he would have been obliged to use drugs, possibly administered by force, and he dreaded the thought of that.

  A fire of olive logs crackled on the hearth of the largest room, filling the air with its pungency. There was a lute here, too. Now Gerhard picked it up and sat by the fire, tuning it. What to play? Ah, yes, Dowland’s “Forlorne Hope.”

  He watched her from under lowered eyelids. The music, coupled no doubt with the realization that David at last knew everything, seemed to have given her a lift. After a while, when she was peaceful, he laid aside the lute and brushed the top of each hand in a gesture he knew she would recognize as comforting, familiar.

  “Close your eyes, why don’t you?” he murmured, and soon he was counting her down to oblivion, “Deeper and deeper, more and more tired,” then she was under.

  “Tonight, I want us to go back to the beginning.”

  “No. Please …”

  But Gerhard could not afford to let her dictate. When she was under, he likened their link to elastic: one day it must lose its tension, its effectiveness, and then his power would be gone. If that happened now, he was finished. He urgently needed to test how far she had built up resistance, so it had to be the event she dreaded most, the adoption. If he could take her back and hold her there, he could do anything with her.

  “We must take a fresh look at the moment when the pain began,” he emphasized, “so that we can make yet another attempt to heal it. Then later, on other evenings, we shall come forward until we arrive in the present.”

  She stirred uneasily.

  “How old are you, Anna?” Sensing her unwillingness to answer, he prompted her gently. “How old …?”

  “Six months.” A childlike voice, unnaturally high.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m lying in my pram.”

  “What can you hear?”

  “Voices.”

  “Do you know the voices, who they belong to?”

  Another long pause. “One.”

  “Yes. And that one belongs to …?”

  “My …”

  “Yes?”

  “Mother.”

  “And the other voice?”

  “Another woman.”

  “They’re talking about …?”

  “Me.”

  They had been here many times before. The scene had no surprises for Kleist the skilled physician, although Gerhard the man sometimes found it a touch fey, this easy backward transference almost to the gate of the womb.

  “And so, Anna … what are they saying? About you?”

  “My … mother. She says, ‘She’s adopted, you know.’”

  The pause was again a long one, but Gerhard said nothing.

  “Then … then the other woman, she just walks away, I can hear her footsteps.”

  The last word came out on a rising tone, halfway to a gulp. Anna chewed her lower lip to stop it from trembling. He watched her face carefully, waiting for the crying to begin. But today there were just two tears; she was letting him look inside so far and no further, so as to give him the most meager satisfaction, enough only to ensure he did not delve any deeper.

  He knew then that his instincts had been right, she would be difficult to control. His heart sank and he felt the cold fear begin to creep through him. But he made himself go on.

  “Why did the woman walk away, do you think?”

  “Because I’m illegitimate. A bastard. No good.”

  “And do you think of yourself as no good?”

  “No. Then I was a baby. But now I’m strong. The woman who spoke to my mother has no power over me. She was bigoted, deliberately unkind, but above all she was jealous.”

  “Wait a moment …”

  “Because no one had ever loved her enough to pick her up and say, ‘Even though your own mother doesn’t want you, even though she’s thrown you away like—’”

  “Anna.”

  “‘Though she’s betrayed you, I won’t betray you. I won’t leave you.’” Suddenly the monotonous child’s voice changed. It began to fall, become mellow, adult. “‘I won’t … ever … let you go.’”

  “Rest. Peace …”

  Still distraught, he waited until she had once again become calm. “Deeper and deeper now,” he managed to say at last. “Into the cool, dark depths, where all is stillness, down and down, further down, you can
feel your shoulders becoming lighter, all that weight, all that burden, falling, falling …”

  Eventually she was on the verge of sleep. Everything seemed to take twice as long as usual, and that too worried him.

  “Anna,” he said softly. “Can you hear me?”

  She was breathing very deeply and slowly; Gerhard had to repeat the question before her lips moved. “Yes.”

  “Omega.”

  One long, mute exhalation … now she resembled a corpse for tranquility.

  “I want you to remember certain things. It’s dangerous for you to be seen by anyone. No one must know where you are. All right?”

  After a long wait, to his immense relief, she nodded.

  “Do not go out unless I am with you, to look after you.”

  She did not react, but he hurried on. “Remember, David wants you to be here. He cannot find the time to come to you. His job is important. But he wants you to be here. He is happy that you are here. You should stay in this house for your own protection, and for his.”

  She was frowning in her trance; he did not know how to interpret that. “Forget your troubles. Trust me.”

  “I trust you.”

  He had already risen to his feet, not expecting her to speak. Her words startled him. After a few moments he regained enough assurance to leave her and do the rounds of the villa, ensuring that every door was locked, before going to his bedroom.

  On a table next to the window stood a telephone.

  Gerhard unplugged the instrument. Anna’s noticing the overhead wires leading to the house had unnerved him, one more sign that, despite the injections he had administered, she was neither as sick nor as subservient as he needed her to be.

  There was scarcely room for the telephone in the special cavity behind his bed, along with Krysalis, the hypodermic, ampules, and the Luger that were already there, but at last, after a struggle, he made it fit.

  TUESDAY

  CHAPTER

  10

  Louis Redman, the CIA’s chief of London Station, received Albert in his palatial suite of offices immediately above the ambassador’s, overlooking Grosvenor Square. “I’m so very glad you could come,” he murmured as he rose, buttoning his jacket. “You know Bill Hayes?”

  “Of course.” Albert extended his hand to another American who was coming around the desk as he entered.

  “Hi, Albert,” said Bill. “I’m glad to see they’ve had the sense to bring you in early for once.”

  “Ah … I’m not exactly in, yet. That’s why I’ve made a point of inviting myself for morning coffee.” Albert looked around and sighed. “I detect a generous budget, don’t I? All that paneling, it’s new.”

  “Rats,” Redman said dramatically. “We need wainscots for our rats. Take a seat, Albert.”

  And while they ranged themselves around the low coffee table, laughing pleasantly, Albert studied his hosts to refresh his memory.

  The two men had little in common on the surface. Albert conceived of Redman as an untypical, anglophile American, of quietly efficient appearance, a transatlantic Jeeves with that gentleman’s gentleman’s tendency to “shimmer.” His clothes were reasonably priced but always looked immaculate; here was a man who brushed cloth and shined leather. He also kept his manners polished, something that counted in Albert’s eyes.

  Hayes he thought of as a mess, someone who wore expensive clothes and let them go to pot. The lenses of his immense rectangular spectacles were so thick that he had to have the frames specially made. When he sported a bow tie, as he did this morning, he reminded Albert of a student in some amateur play, dressed up for the part of Mr. Boffin the Scientist. Or Mr Golliwog, as certain members of the British contingent privately called him; for Hayes had accelerated into the fast lane from a New York public housing project, and he was black.

  “You both know and I know what’s wanted here,” Albert murmured as he accepted a cup of weak Colombian blend from Redman, but it was Hayes who answered, “A quick kill.”

  “Correct.”

  “Let me get this clear,” Redman said in a low voice, “before we get embroiled in politics. We asked for a briefing on the disappearance of Krysalis and you’ve been sent in response to that, right?”

  “I drew the short straw, yes.” Which wasn’t strictly true, thought Albert; he’d fought hard to ensure that his name was chosen.

  “From which, are we to assume that you’ve been brought in by our opposite numbers in the British fraternity on the usual specialist terms?”

  “Not quite. Neutralization of Anna is merely one option being studied at the moment. I’m to make my preparations, but I’m being held in reserve.”

  Hayes and Redman exchanged glances. “Then, forgive me,” Redman said, “but ought we to be dealing with you at all? At this stage, I mean?”

  “That depends on what you want. I thought it might help if I—as opposed to my more peaceable colleagues—could establish what you’ve been told and how you propose to tackle this mess.”

  Redman grunted. “As to the first part: a woman’s missing with her husband’s copy of Krysalis. She hasn’t made contact with the Reds yet, as far as the indications go—is that right, Bill?”

  Hayes nodded.

  “As regards the second question: we want the file back, soonest.”

  “The file?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the woman?”

  “We’re indifferent.” Redman smiled. “But as far as Anna goes, your vote’s for hunt and destroy, right?”

  “Emphatically so.” Albert reached out to pocket a couple of shortbread biscuits. He did not eat sweet things, but Montgomery did, which went a long way toward explaining his corpulence.

  “Tell us who stands where, Albert.”

  Albert pursed his lips while he considered how best to answer Redman’s question. “Brewster’s been put in charge,” he began cautiously. “He’s huffing and puffing as usual. Doesn’t want to decide anything.”

  Hayes coughed, and made a scornful face.

  “What about Six?” Redman asked.

  “Shorrocks very reasonably won’t make up his mind without some hard intelligence. Five have assigned Fox to this case—know him?”

  Redman nodded.

  “I’ve got a lot of time for Fox, and on our side he’s the one whose point of view most closely resembles mine. Given the choice, he’d let me run.”

  “Why are you here, Albert?”

  “You asked for a briefing and I—”

  “Why are you really here?” Redman’s expression had turned less genial. Albert met his eyes, and for a long moment held him transfixed.

  “I’ve been doing my homework,” he said at last, in a quiet voice. “She’s lethal.”

  “Anna Lescombe?” Redman seemed to have trouble believing it, but his manners still held.

  “She’s shit.”

  “Damn right,” interjected Hayes. “Albert’s a class act, Louis, you should listen to him.”

  Albert had begun with his own, private reasons for wanting to see some action. Twenty thousand reasons … but things had moved on since his first meeting with Fox, at the Lescombes’ house.

  “If she’s bad,” he said, “and I’m convinced she is, she might have picked up a hell of a lot from her husband, over the years. He’s only been on the Krysalis committee for a few weeks, but his positive security clearance goes back years. And she’s corrupt.”

  “Explain that,” Redman said.

  “She’s got a lot of money, a lot of success at her back. Which means that if she’s a spy then it’s because she’s got contempt for society. She’s doing it for the fun of it. For sport.”

  Suddenly Albert’s eyes met Hayes’, and he remembered that here was a kindred spirit. They could both see a way into Anna Lescombe. She was rich and she was free; she celebrated her privileges by undermining those of others. Albert could tolerate genuine ideologues, even when they were opposed to him. But he had no time for discontented traitors withou
t excuses for doing what they did. Hayes felt the same way, he could sense that.

  “Right,” said Albert. “You asked me why I’m here? The purpose of this meeting is to establish—informally, for the moment—how we’re going to set about retrieving the lost Krysalis file and clear up the mess generally in time for the Vancouver summit. I take it we’re all agreed about the importance of this?”

  “Shit, yes!”

  The interjection came stinging across the coffee table. Hayes’ face was hard.

  “Krysalis is deadly for us,” he said. “That file contains Pentagon-originated, vote-sensitive material, some of it highly critical of our pro-Europe, pro-NATO lobbies.” He rested one elbow on the table and jabbed his forefinger at Albert. “You … are going to have to be pretty damn quick on your feet.”

  “You sound a mite worried, Bill,” Albert commented.

  “Bet your ass. Bush and Gorbachev are about to face each other across that table at Vancouver. What’s on the agenda? Everything! Reduction of nuclear weapons across the board, reduction of conventional armor and artillery, reductions in manpower. You name it, they’ll cut it. If NATO can manage to keep its General Situation Plan to itself, that is. But once Krysalis goes over the wire, our President will be playing poker with a mirror behind him and that is out.”

  “Oh yes, indeed. Especially since Krysalis makes it clear that, if D-Day was tomorrow, West Germany would be left to its own devices.”

  “Look.” Redman spread his hands, palms upward, like a priest invoking the Holy Ghost. “Bill and I don’t make policy around here. So please …”

  “We want that file back, safe, intact,” Hayes said. “We’re going to use any means we have to.” He smiled at Albert. “We’ll shoot your woman on sight. I mean that.”

  Albert sighed. “I was afraid you’d take that line.”

  “Well, no one else is going to.” Redman sounded touchy. “Bill, you’re off base. There’s no question of anyone getting shot, not yet.”

  Hayes sat back, without apologizing.

  “We don’t need an assassin right now, Albert. If you’ve come here today to whip up a little support, I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place.”