Krysalis: Krysalis

by John Tranhaile

  “Good God.” By now Broadway was almost whispering.

  “No one knows where she’s gone, who she’s with, or anything. I can’t get any cooperation.”

  “My dear chap.” Broadway’s voice sounded less than warm, but there was a change in it. “What an appalling thing.”

  “Yes. And I … Duncan, you know what they say, about not realizing what you’ve got until you’ve lost it….” David laughed in an attempt to cover his discomfiture. “Well, it’s true.”

  Broadway looked away, embarrassed.

  “Is there anything, anything at all that might help me find her?” David’s voice was beseeching. “Perhaps you think I’m being pathetic, but when a man loves his wife …”

  He couldn’t go on.

  Broadway cleared his throat a couple of times, obviously wishing he could be somewhere else.

  “Look, I’m sorry …” David made a great effort and recovered some of his composure. “Is there anyone in chambers she was close to, who might know where she is?”

  “No. I’ve already asked.” Broadway grunted. “I suppose Robyn might just conceivably know something.”

  “Who is Robyn?”

  “An American lawyer.”

  “He’s here? In England?”

  “I shouldn’t think so for one minute. It’s a she, incidentally, not a he. A woman attorney from New York. She spent a year here, researching for some thesis she was doing, comparative law as I recall.”

  “Oh yes, that rings a sort of bell. Anna mentioned her. But why do you think she might know something?”

  “Because they were like two peas in a pod. Robyn shared her room, you see. After she went back to the States, Anna was always getting letters from her. She used to read out bits to us at chambers’ tea.”

  David gawked at him. “What was that again—letters?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anna shared a room with this woman for one whole year, a friend, you say?”

  “Yes. You find that astonishing?”

  “It’s just that I … I hadn’t realized they were quite so close.”

  “She never told you about Robyn?”

  “She mentioned her a couple of times. But as a professional acquaintance, not …”

  A thought struck David, and he thanked God for Broadway’s punctilious refusal to let Albert search Anna’s room without a warrant.

  “What does she look like … here, is this her?”

  He pushed the photograph he had found in Anna’s desk across to Broadway, who nodded confirmation. He went on to say more about Robyn’s work in chambers, but David was no longer listening. His mind had leapt to the interview before the Krysalis vetting committee, with him airily confessing that Anna’s circle of friends did not overlap with his. The words had meant nothing to him at the time; now they were starting to assume a frightful reality.

  “Did you tell Albert about Robyn?” he asked Broadway. “And these letters, did you mention them?”

  “No. I wasn’t asked.”

  “Do you know if the clerks said anything about them?”

  “I know they didn’t.”

  “How?”

  “The police questioned me with the clerks at the same time and I jolly well saw them off the premises as soon as the interview ended.”

  David felt that was good, without knowing why, but he had precious little else to comfort him. “I just don’t understand any of this. The writ, this woman lawyer … why should Anna have personal post sent here, and not the house?”

  He stared at Broadway, as if the Q.C. might have an answer, but it was so obviously his own department. If the husband didn’t know …

  What other things didn’t the husband know?

  “I shall tell chambers that Anna’s ill.” Broadway pursed his lips and looked up at the ceiling. “Hepatitis, say. Contaminated food. Been ordered to rest.”

  “Thanks,” David mumbled.

  Neither man spoke. David realized that he had come to the end of this road, and with the knowledge came a sense of shame. “Look, I’m … I’m sorry about barging in. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Forgotten. Ah …” Broadway again seemed to be having trouble with his throat. He coughed, blew his nose, all the while looking everywhere but at David. “I really don’t know how to say it, but … well, it’s annoying, Anna going off like this. Downright annoying. But … I can’t find words to tell you how much I hope you find her and that everything’s all right.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Because … we had our little differences, but we were all immensely fond of her. Are immensely fond of her. She’s a wonderful woman, a fine lawyer. And if anything bad were to happen …”

  He trailed off, staring at the blotter on top of his desk.

  “Thank you,” David repeated quietly. “But … please don’t say any more.”

  The two men shook hands. Then David was going down the corridor, passing through the clerks’ room, making his way into the deserted Temple. A busy road. Cars hooting, the squeal of brakes, another world, nothing to do with him. He found himself sitting beside the river, staring at the Embankment wall, while he struggled to refocus his picture of Anna. He sat there for a long time, so long that dusk came quietly down on London, obliging Albert to move one bench closer in order to keep his quarry in view.

  CHAPTER

  15

  Jürgen Barzel joined the HVA’s Athens Watch just after eight o’clock on Tuesday evening. “Who?” he rasped. Erich Rehlinger pointed. “Over there. The one in white jeans and a green shirt, carrying a rucksack.”

  Barzel did not follow his gaze immediately, but concentrated on Rehlinger instead. He was within inches of an ignominious end to his career, he was tired, he was famished, and here he was, forced to depend on people he didn’t know and had never worked with for his sole chance of salvation. Rehlinger seemed efficient, though. All Barzel could do was put his faith in him and beg for luck.

  They were standing on the first level beneath Omonia Square, jostled by crowds heading for the railway station. Barzel reluctantly took his eyes off Rehlinger and followed the direction of his pointing finger. He could make out a Greek youth of about eighteen, loitering by a bank of phone booths some twenty meters away. He seemed uncertain whether he really wanted to make a call.

  This was his last, his only hope. Barzel gazed at the boy like a wolf eying food.

  “What have you found out?” he murmured.

  “Nothing much. He’s got a packet of money in his wallet. Station’s working on it now.”

  “Name?”

  “First name: Iannis. That’s all Heinrich managed to pick up.”

  “Shit!” Heinrich was another unknown quantity. “Where’s Heinrich got to?”

  Rehlinger nodded. “Almost next to him.”

  “Will he be able to overhear if friend Iannis makes a call?”

  “Should be.”

  “How’s his Greek?”

  “Five-five.”

  “Thank God!” That was the code for bilingual standard in speech and writing. The knowledge that a first-class interpreter had been placed at his disposal was the first bit of solid good news to come Barzel’s way in quite a while.

  “Where did you pick him up?” he asked.

  “A Telex-and-fax bureau down an alley off Zinonos Street.”

  So, thought Barzel, Margaret did her stuff. That brought scant consolation, however. He lit a cigarette and rested his back against the wall in such a way that he could always keep tabs on this strangely hesitant lad called Iannis. This whole exercise was a very long shot. But his instincts weren’t usually wrong.

  Relax, he told himself. Be calm. Think it through. Again.

  He had panicked HVA’s Athens Station into having them shadow all known MI6 and CIA legmen to see if any of them seemed unduly interested in public fax offices, and got on a plane. By the time he reached Athens, there was a response. Rehlinger’s target, an MI6 operative of minimal experience and careles
s methods, was tracking, none too subtly, a Greek boy who visited the same office every two hours, on the hour.

  A movement caught Barzel’s eye. “He’s going to phone,” he said quietly, stubbing out his cigarette. “Move in. But keep it clean.”

  The boy at last seemed to have plucked up the courage to enter a vacant phone booth. He looked around several times, as if making sure that no one was watching. Suddenly Barzel stiffened. “What the—”

  Iannis had produced a black bag from the rucksack he was carrying. He used it to cover his hand while he dialed, and Barzel swore under his breath.

  “A pro,” Rehlinger murmured in his ear.

  “Or an obedient amateur,” Barzel grated. “We’ve got him, Erich.” He wanted so much to believe his words!

  “Looks like it.”

  “Where are the boys?”

  “In the square.”

  Barzel squeezed his arm. “Upstairs, now, give them a go.”

  Rehlinger slipped away, leaving Barzel on watch. Iannis pressed money into the slot, said something rapidly, put down the phone and walked off, shouldering his rucksack. He took the moving stairway up to street level, where he crossed quickly over to Stadiou and began thrusting his way through the crowds. Heinrich caught up with Barzel at the intersection.

  “What did Iannis say?” Barzel snapped.

  “He said, ‘I sent it, no reply yet.’”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yes.”

  “Got him! Come on, we mustn’t lose him now. You follow on foot; I’ll pick up the others.”

  As Iannis came to Santaroza he bumped into a gang of students. There was a moment of confusion while the various parties sorted themselves out. The youth walked on, rubbing his arm; once or twice he looked behind him, as if something about the recent encounter troubled him. Suddenly he lurched against a shop front, clutching his stomach. He tried to cry out, but the words couldn’t force their way past the blockage that had materialized in his throat. By the time an ambulance screeched to a halt beside him and two men were helping him into it, he was nearly unconscious.

  Barzel slammed the ambulance’s doors, ran around to the front, and climbed in beside the driver.

  The journey to Piraeus took an hour and a half; Athens’ evening traffic was heavy and Barzel had an aversion to direct routes. At last the ambulance pulled up on a dingy and darkened quay beside a cabin cruiser. The vessel’s engines were already turning over. Iannis was swiftly carried aboard on a stretcher. Less than a minute after they’d arrived the boat had put to sea.

  Barzel clattered down the companionway to the forward cabin, where Iannis was lying on a bunk. Leather straps held him fast around the chest and thighs. He was breathing quickly, his face looked clammy.

  Barzel picked up the boy’s rucksack and rifled quickly through it. A few clothes, toothbrush, razor, and a battered, dog-eared paperback book with the picture of a half-naked woman on the front. Barzel’s expression set into a faraway look, then he grimaced.

  “Wake him,” he ordered.

  The man called Heinrich produced a doctor’s bag and administered an injection. The effect was almost immediate. Iannis opened his eyes, tried to sit up. Barzel tapped Heinrich’s arm. “Get on with it.”

  The other man began to address Iannis in Greek. Barzel had no idea what he said, but he assumed Heinrich was trying to soothe his “patient.” If so, he seemed to have little success; Iannis’ eyes bulged and his face, so pale a moment before, turned scarlet. After a while he realized that the straps were unbreakable and gave up struggling.

  Heinrich dug into his bag and produced a roll of cloth. While Barzel watched with interest, he spread it out on the boy’s chest to reveal six syringes, each containing a different-colored liquid. His voice hardened; now Barzel knew he was explaining the effects of the various shots.

  The boat began to pitch. That meant they had left the protection of the harbor, causing Barzel to breathe a little easier. He wanted a lot of water between him and Piraeus before what was going to happen next.

  He looked down at the bunk. The boy had pure skin and an even purer look in his eyes. Good-looking, too.

  Barzel felt a peculiar sweetness arise within him. There was something exquisite about having an untainted soul in your power. He cared nothing for physical torture, which gave him no pleasure, or the finer techniques of mind control. What delighted him was the anticipation, the waiting time, before the torturer went about his squalid, unartistic work.

  Today his pleasure was destined to be short. Heinrich looked at him and said in German, “This boy will talk.”

  Barzel tossed the paperback aside. “Make it quick.”

  When Heinrich spoke to Iannis the boy answered at once, the words tripping over one another in his anxiety to spill everything he knew. Suddenly Barzel heard a word he thought he recognized.

  “What did he say about Kleist?” he shouted.

  Heinrich held up a hand to stanch the boy’s flow and turned to Barzel. “He says he comes from Paxos, a small island to the south of Corfu, off the west coast of the mainland.”

  “I know where Corfu is, you fool, go on!”

  “His father works for Kleist.”

  Barzel clapped his hands together, once, and nodded.

  “Yesterday, Kleist came to the island, with a woman. Blonde. About forty. Iannis was sent to Athens, almost immediately. Kleist gave him plenty of money and a document, explaining how he wanted it transmitted to London by fax.”

  “A moment. Does Iannis speak any language other than Greek? Could he read the document?”

  “No. Although he can recognize the Roman alphabet. He was worried at first that this might disqualify him for the job Kleist had in mind—”

  “Whereas in fact it must have been a vital requirement.”

  “Of course, to maximize security.”

  “Shit! What else?”

  “That’s all, so far.” Heinrich readdressed himself to Iannis. Another babble of Greek followed.

  “He says he was told to visit the fax office every two hours and ask if they’d received an answer to the document they had transmitted for him this morning. If there was a response, his instructions were to contact Kleist by phone, always a different phone, and spell the document to him. If nothing, he still had to report every evening at the same time. He was to sleep in a different hotel each night, and keep moving around during the day, until Sunday. Then he could go home.”

  Before Barzel could speak, Iannis again broke out into a spirited monologue. Barzel looked at Heimich, who shrugged.

  “It seems Iannis doesn’t want to go home. He spent part of today hunting for work. The season’s just begun. Hotels and restaurants will soon need staff.”

  More voluble Greek. This time Heinrich smiled. “He’s hoping to pick up an American woman. Then maybe he needn’t ever go home.”

  Barzel grunted. “Ask him, what did he think was the point of all this? Did Kleist say?”

  During the conversation that followed, he never once took his eyes off the young Greek’s face.

  “Nothing legal,” Heinrich said at last. “He says no one pays that well for legitimate errands.”

  “Smart,” Barzel commented. “Is that all? Ask him about the woman.”

  When Heinrich did so, Iannis’ expression changed. His face lost some of its terror, the eyes softened.

  “He says she was beautiful. He would like to marry a woman like that one day. She looked tired, perhaps she was ill, but Iannis regretted being sent away.”

  “Name?”

  “He was told once, but he couldn’t remember. He was too busy giving her the eye.”

  “Forty, blonde. Gerhard, Gerhard …” Barzel slowly shook his head. “Come up,” he said to Heimich.

  Once on deck, Barzel rested both hands on the rail and stared at the sea. He was holding Iannis’ paperback again, turning it over and over as he spoke.

  “Do you want us to take you to that island now?” Heinrich ask
ed him.

  Barzel knew a desperate moment of indecision. “Yes. No! There’s something I have to do first, in England. But I can’t afford the time….” He tossed his head again, as if trying to shake the demons out of it. “Or can I …?”

  “The husband?”

  “Yes. It was his file, he holds the key to this. I don’t know what the hell’s going on. Kleist’s a mystery to me. Did he panic? Or is this part of a plan?”

  Heinrich shrugged.

  Barzel reached a decision. “I must speak to Lescombe. No choice. Take me back.”

  “What do you want done with the boy?”

  “Keep him safe, keep him happy. Make sure he phones Kleist every evening, as planned. The same message as tonight: ‘Nothing yet,’ okay?”

  “Right. For how long?”

  “Until Sunday—he was told he could go home then, isn’t that what you said?”

  “Yes.”

  “Or earlier if I say so.”

  “And then?”

  “Then?”

  “The boy—what do you want us to do with him after Sunday?”

  “Hm.” Barzel’s expression showed a touch of melancholy. For a long time he studied the crude picture of the front of the paperback, as if it held all of Kleist’s secrets.

  “You say he doesn’t want to go home?” he said at last.

  “That’s right.”

  “I think he must have his wish,” Barzel murmured to the waters below. “Use plenty of anchor chain. And put him in a sack, I don’t want him surfacing. Oh, and, Heinrich …”

  “Yes?”

  “Make sure he’s well and truly asleep before you throw him over the side, hein?” Barzel hesitated, the memory of that innocent, bronzed face strong in his mind. He smoothed the cover of the book, once, twice. “None of this is his fault.”

  WEDNESDAY

  CHAPTER

  16

  Wednesday began with one of those peerless Greek mornings that normally only find their season in May or June, a brilliant perspective of long horizons and lofty cloud, of crystalline water and warm breezes.