Krysalis: Krysalis

by John Tranhaile

  He thought of the empty table, its prize location. “This man Kleist was supposed to be lunching here today?”

  “Yes.”

  “But he didn’t keep the reservation…. Did he telephone?”

  “No.”

  “Is that usual?”

  “Sometimes he gets held up with a patient.” Racine was whispering now. “He doesn’t always …”

  “He doesn’t always bother to let us know.” Seppy finished his wife’s sentence.

  “He used to eat here with other women, would I be right in thinking that?”

  “Very infrequently. He was rather a solitary sort of chap.”

  “I suppose you don’t, by any chance, have an address for Mr. Kleist?”

  Septimus stared at the floor. At last Racine said, “I’ll look it up for you.” She opened a drawer. “My diary … an old one. Here we are….”

  Albert wrote down the address.

  “Is there anything else you need?”

  “I’d like to look at your bookings over the past five years. No, that’s unreasonable, isn’t it? Over a period going back as far as you can and ending with the last time Mrs. Lescombe ate here.”

  The diaries were produced, after a search. Albert skimmed through them, looking to see if Kleist’s reservations married up with the dates in Anna’s chambers diary, and was not surprised to find that they did.

  She had been seeing a psychotherapist. He could think of only one reason for that. It was because she needed help. What kind of help?

  “Is it all right if I take these away for a while?”

  Seppy nodded. “Of course.”

  “We’ll have to analyze them in detail, but perhaps you could help me … was there a pattern?”

  “Pattern?”

  “What I mean is, did they lunch here twice a year, something like that? Or three times a week for six months, followed by a break … know the sort of thing I mean?”

  Seppy thought. “At the beginning, years ago, they were a couple. Then it changed. There was a long break, as I recall.”

  “A row of some kind?”

  “I wouldn’t know. After two or three years, suddenly there she was again. But by then it had become more like you said earlier, lunch twice a year. Birthday, perhaps. Catching up on the news.”

  Damn, thought Albert. Twice and thrice damn. But there’s no need to harp on inconvenient details when I make my report. “It went on like that, until …”

  “Two years ago. Or so.”

  “And then it stopped. But Kleist continued to be a regular customer?”

  “On and off. His wife died of cancer, we didn’t see him for a while. Look, this is all a bit … is there anything else?”

  Albert thought hard. “Only my bill, please.”

  Seppy produced it very quickly. Albert paid in cash, Fox’s cash, adding a reasonable but not lavish tip.

  “I’ll show you out,” said Seppy. At the door he said, “If you do have to get in touch again, perhaps you’d make a point of coming through me?”

  “Understood.”

  “You see, my wife … she was a patient of Kleist’s. When her father died.” Seppy made a face. “Cost us an absolute bloody bomb.”

  “I’m sorry.” Albert knocked his forehead with a knuckle. “I was being thick.”

  “Anna Lescombe wasn’t the only one, you know. Kleist had a few, how should I say, favorites. After his wife died.”

  “Lovers, you mean?”

  “I would think so. One in particular. An American. Don’t know her surname, but he used to call her Robyn.”

  “Did Anna and Kleist …?”

  “Screw? I was never there, so I can’t say. But I’d guess yes, at the start. You get a nose for what people are up to in this business.”

  “And later?”

  Seppy shrugged.

  “Did you ever hear them talk about … about anything, really?”

  “Nope. Inflexible rule: no eavesdropping. It’s their business and none of yours.”

  “Racine, would she have heard them discussing anything?”

  Seppy guffawed, then subjected Albert to a look of pity not unmixed with scorn. “Understood,” he said quietly, putting obvious quotation marks around the word. “That’s what you said, old bean. ‘Understood’ …”

  Then, yes, it did dawn, and Albert realized what he had been missing earlier, that obvious “something.” “He became a friend,” those were Seppy’s words, what kind of friend, thought Albert, how close, on a scale of one to a million, just how intimate, would you say?

  The sudden vision was disturbingly real: Racine Lamont standing in the doorway of her long, narrow office, watching the table overlooking the garden, week in, week out, one face sometimes different but the other ever the same, monotonously the same, with eyes for l’amie du jour, not for her. Never again for her….

  “Correction,” Albert said lightly. “Under orders. Sorry.”

  CHAPTER

  22

  Anna tried to struggle, but they bundled her into the car, Gerhard and the stranger off the ferry, yes and the policeman, too. For her own good. For the sake of her health. When she cried out, at first the onlookers frowned, then they noticed the police uniform and their indignation gave way to smiles. She found herself sitting in the back of the Fiat. Someone had bandaged her wrists together; she was helpless. A prisoner of the man she had once trusted more than any other, apart from her husband, David.

  “So, Kleist, it’s good to find you still alive.”

  The last English words she heard for a long time. She remembered nothing of the journey back to the house except lengthy exchanges in an ugly, guttural language she didn’t understand but assumed must be German. Then she was sitting at the kitchen table, while Gerhard took beers from the fridge.

  “Untie me,” she demanded.

  “Will you promise to be quiet?”

  “Go to hell.”

  Gerhard shrugged and moved away. “Suit yourself.”

  Anna fought the bandages but they were expertly knotted; all she succeeded in doing was chafe her wrists.

  “I’ll be quiet,” she said in a low voice. “Just untie me, will you?”

  Gerhard cut the knots with a kitchen knife. He sat down opposite her, next to the stranger, and for a time the two of them drank their Hellas without speaking. The man in cream had a habit of sucking both lips after he’d taken a swig, first the lower one, then the upper, his tongue always careful to milk the ends of his mustache of their last vestiges of sustenance.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce me?” she asked Gerhard defiantly.

  He looked at the other man first, as if seeking permission; only when the newcomer nodded did he say, “This is Jürgen Barzel.”

  “You know him?”

  “I know him.”

  “Who is he? What’s he doing here?”

  Gerhard stared at her. It was as if a sheep had miraculously asked its shepherd what butchers did for a living.

  “He’s a kind of … troubleshooter.”

  “Why do you say it like that? As if you were enemies.”

  Why? thought Gerhard. Because HVA has found out about this villa and I don’t know how. I don’t know what they know, don’t know anything except that I’m terrified. That’s why my throat constricts and my saliva dries up, Anna.

  “Mrs. Lescombe … have I pronounced it rightly?” Anna found herself being drawn into Barzel’s eyes as they inflated to fill her own vision.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a pleasure meeting you. You have stimulated us! We have been working late nights on your account, Anna … I wish to call you Anna. Do I have permission?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “And I am Jürgen. Tell me about yourself, Anna.”

  She obviously didn’t understand what he required. Barzel must have sensed what was in her mind, for he smiled and said, “Don’t be nervous, I pray you. I am your friend. That is why I’m here—to help you and Gerhard.”
<
br />   Not so, thought Gerhard.

  “What should I tell you, then?”

  “About yourself. David. And your daughter, Juliet.”

  “You … know a lot about me.”

  As Anna began to speak, Gerhard mentally begged her to be careful. If HVA had discovered the fax he’d sent to London, they would kill him. Execution, that’s what they’d call it, because that’s what you did with traitors, no good planning a new life in South America, too late for that…. And since Anna would be a witness, then she too must die.

  When did things start to go wrong? The plan he’d put together looked so foolproof. For a long time now he had wanted out, some grand finale on which to bring down the curtain of his nerve-shredding career as psychotherapist-cum-spymaster. He’d been cultivating his contacts in Lima and Asunción, old friends of Clara, knowing he must flee. Even if it meant the end of his own sister and her family, he could do that. He could do it because each new job for HVA had come to represent a fresh episode in a serial nightmare that would one day destroy him, and when the chips were down it looked simple enough: he was more important than Ilsa.

  Fear of detection, of prison, had all but disabled Gerhard Kleist. The Krysalis debacle was the last straw; he knew he would never forget that moment of dread when he had made himself enter the Lescombes’ house, only to discover that David might return at any moment. Even a cultured life in England could not compensate for such horrors.

  Things had been all right when he was younger, and the tension affected him less. In those days he could lose himself in work. But then, too suddenly, and although not yet fifty, he was a widower and growing old. The slack skin at the jowls. Face no longer quite smooth, more the texture of an orange. Waking at three, most mornings and not only after a night out, to urinate, then unable to sleep again before dawn. Then sleeping like unto death until the alarm clock slugged him with its dreadful, heavy burden of consciousness.

  He’d never stopped dreaming about the woman sitting opposite. In those dreams her face was bright, alive with intelligence, ever youthful. After marrying David she had forgotten Gerhard Kleist, or so he’d believed until the day before, when as she lay on the beach her body had told his massaging hands an altogether different story. Yesterday the fantasy had taken on a new tangibility. He knew she could be persuaded to go with him, forget the past, live only for the present….

  But first it was necessary to concoct some way of dealing with Barzel. He must find an excuse to go to the bedroom. Once he had the gun …

  Gerhard came back to reality to hear Barzel say, “So now tell me—” he smiled, a beau soliciting some naughty confidence—“I am a convert. Having talked to you, I understand everything. But why must everyone else in Europe fall in love with you at the same time as me? Mm? Tell me!”

  Anna’s nervous laugh alarmed Gerhard. Be careful, Anna. Keep it bottled up, as always; don’t choose this of all moments to change. As long as you have a secret, no matter how trivial, your life is safe.

  You must get the gun, he told himself. Now.

  “Everywhere I go, I find my dear colleagues ahead of me. At the station. At the airport. Everywhere it’s the same. The English. The French. The other Germans. The—dear God help us all!—Italians.”

  Anna’s eyes flickered, but she could not look away.

  “Even at Corfu airport there were old-time spies standing around, trying to look like touts. You’d think they could afford at least one bottle of fake suntan lotion between them. Fortunately they didn’t see me, or I would have been obliged to nod my head, at least. One cannot be rude to colleagues. But Anna … in Corfu!”

  By now Anna was shrinking, or so it seemed to Gerhard.

  “What have we here? I will tell you. A major security alert in NATO. You are ‘hot,’ Anna, that is how we say it. Scalding. I could cook a nice steak on you, and it would be overdone. Why? Perhaps you have something these people want very badly, ja?”

  Anna swallowed. There was a long silence, which Barzel broke by saying, “Do you have the Krysalis file here, perhaps?”

  “No,” Anna said. Then, incredulously, “You know about that?”

  Barzel nodded. “I know.” Gerhard noted with relief that he was smiling. “Where is it?”

  Gerhard rapidly listed the possibilities. Lie, pretend the file was still in London? Hopeless. Either Barzel would tear the place apart and find Krysalis, in which case he would kill them, or he would use the HVA machine to run checks in London that must come up with the truth eventually. In which case also he would kill them. Tell the truth now, and have done with it? Once Barzel had Krysalis, there was no incentive for him to leave either Kleist or Anna alive ….

  “The file’s in my bedroom,” he said. “I’ll get it.”

  “What!” Anna was on her feet, her face white. “But you said … you told me you’d leave it.”

  Then Gerhard’s expression completed the tale and her legs gave way beneath her. At first she covered her face with her hands, but suddenly she seemed to lose all strength, for her head drooped forward onto the table, where she cradled it in her arms, defeated.

  Gerhard stood up, telling Barzel with a look that he should guard her; only when the other man nodded his assent did he leave the room.

  He closed the bedroom door behind him and ran to the bed. Seconds later, he was retrieving his Luger. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of a hand that shook, only to find that the beads of moisture broke through again at once. This was no time for cowardice. You have a weapon, he told himself. Use it!

  As he rose from beside the bed, the phone rang. Gerhard stared at it. Who on earth …?

  Then he remembered. Iannis.

  While in the very act of reaching out for the receiver, he heard footsteps in the passage. Torn between the needs to silence the phone and to conceal the gun, Gerhard gritted his teeth, powerless to act. Next second he had thrust the Luger under the bed and was clamping the phone to his ear so hard that it hurt.

  “Ne?” he snapped, as Barzel entered the bedroom.

  “I went again today,” the boy said. “Nothing.” Then Gerhard heard only the pun of a severed contact.

  “Who was that?” Barzel asked.

  “No one. Where’s Anna, you shouldn’t have—”

  “What the hell do you mean ‘no one’? Who?”

  “Wrong number. Happens all the time, the phones here are crap.”

  Barzel stared at him in silence, as if weighing the truth of his words. “Where’s this file?” he said at last.

  Gerhard once more pushed the bed aside and rummaged in the hole. “Here …”

  The two men returned to the kitchen. Gerhard poured himself another beer, knowing he’d lost more than a golden opportunity to dispose of his unwelcome visitor; he’d lost vital ground. Whatever Barzel thought when he arrived, he definitely mistrusted him now. Damn Iannis …

  The boy had sounded odd. As if he wasn’t alone, someone was listening in. A girl? Gerhard hoped not; the last thing he wanted was Iannis messing around with strangers.

  Strangers. What if Barzel had somehow managed to trace Iannis and … no, it was impossible. In that event, Barzel would have come to the island with reinforcements and enough hardware to fight a war. Keep your head, he told himself firmly, don’t panic now.

  Barzel breezed through the file before beginning to study it more carefully. After he had finished he sat for a long time staring into space. At last he turned to Gerhard and said, in English, “I think, if Anna will excuse us, we must talk quite seriously….”

  “Will she run away?” he asked, as they reached the terrace.

  “I doubt it. Even if she does, she won’t get far.”

  “Unlike you. You, Kleist, appear to have got very far, without telling us. Surprised to see me here, was! You thought we didn’t know about your little love nest?”

  “How the devil did you—”

  “Oh, a little bird, you know? Many, many years ago. People used to have a good
laugh about it. ‘The look on his face!’ that’s what we used to say. ‘When Kleist finds out that we know!’”

  “What made you think I’d be here?”

  “Berlin put out an alert when you and the woman were missing. Different people are searching for you in different places, I drew Greece.” Barzel glanced back toward the house. “Does she understand German?”

  “No.”

  “All right, we speak German then.” Barzel looked at his watch, a busy man with a plane to catch who had allowed himself to be sidetracked by a snake-oil salesman. “You’re an idiot.”

  Gerhard had been expecting an accusation of rank treason. Barzel’s mildness took him off guard. Think, he told himself savagely. You’re not dead yet.

  “Why?” he said, falling into the sofa-swing. “I bring you the biggest prize you’ve—”

  “Point one, you brought us nothing! You have sat here quietly, keeping us guessing. We shall discuss that, I promise you. Point two: the file is too big! Files like that don’t come our way, Kleist.”

  “But—”

  “Suppose you were the President of the United States. Imagine someone approached you, just before a major superpower summit, and told you that he had papers, a microfiche, setting out the entire Warsaw Pact military dispositions and strategy. Would you believe him? Of course not. Why? First, because one of the ways you defeat spies is by keeping information in tiny gobbets; second, because in the run-up to a conference you don’t believe anything you’re told anyway.”

  “England doesn’t work like that.”

  “Everybody works like that, comrade! This is a plant. We’re meant to read this rubbish, shuffle a dozen divisions in and out of Poland and I don’t know what else. It’s a trick, you’ve fallen for it. I’m telling you, Kleist, you’re a dead man. Dead.”

  “But you told me to do this! ‘Anna’s your patient, she’s married to a top civil servant who’s interesting to us, get the file!’”

  “Exactly.” Barzel swung around to face Gerhard. “That’s the point. Someone in MI5 discovered what was going on. This is pre-summit counterintelligence. It means your cover’s gone, mine too.” He paused. Then, amazingly, he smiled. “Ah … if only I could believe what I’m saying.”