She had only one aim now: to escape from this island and its infernal Prospero. Nothing else mattered a damn.
“We’re going to straighten a few things out,” Anna said abruptly, and Gerhard turned toward her.
“Of course,” he said. “That’s what I’m here—”
“No. You’re here to do the opposite. That’s been your plan all along.”
“I don’t—”
“When I first met you, I was suffering from postnatal depression, right? A bad case.”
“Yes.”
“And you said all my problems went back to guilt, and you were going to cleanse me of guilt. I felt guilty because I’d been given away at birth and I saw it as my fault.”
“Yes,” he agreed again. “You felt, quite literally, guilty for having been bom. Born substandard.”
“And guilt, for me, had become a habit. I was screwed up because I saw myself as responsible for having had those girls expelled, and for killing Nan, do you remember that?”
“Certainly. You may recall I told you so, at the time.”
He had told her so many things, at different times. She would have to examine them all again, sorting out those that were valid from the lies that formed part of the web of deception with which he’d ensnared her. But that could wait. A specific memory was struggling for mastery in her head.
After Nan’s death there had been a funeral at which she was present without being present. She had been kept outside the crematorium chapel, in the car, with her father, unable to say good-bye properly, stuck for life with an overweening impression of death as something sinful from which children ought to be protected. She was nine, old enough, she felt, to mourn. Perhaps being made to stay outside was part of the punishment for having murdered Nan.
She’d never cried for her grandmother’s death. Even now, she could not cry.
The cold marble hurt the undersides of her calves. As she shifted physically, so her perspective changed also, enabling her to see a hitherto concealed link between Nan’s passing and one of Gerhard Kleist’s more poignant insights.
“I want to ask you something,” she said. “To check something, if you like.”
“Yes?”
“Do you remember telling me about the most difficult problem a therapist has to face?”
“Not offhand. Remind me.”
“Death without a corpse.”
“Oh. That.”
“Someone disappears, for good. Is he dead? Suffering from amnesia? Or has he just abandoned his family, crushed by pressures they couldn’t understand. Yes?”
“Yes. There’s nothing for the therapist to seize on, you see.”
“The survivors always feel guilty, don’t they? They think they’re to blame, they drove the missing person away, by not measuring up.”
“What’s prompted all this?” He was genuinely at sea.
It was the not knowing that brought these hapless souls to Gerhard, ignorance compounded by feelings of wholly unjustified guilt. Anna was beginning to perceive something until now kept at bay: just as Nan had gone with no good-byes on either side, so, by giving her up for adoption, her real mother too had “died,” without affording her daughter an opportunity to mourn. And both women had thus caused her to feel guilty, for different but related reasons.
She’d always felt she had failed them in some mysterious way. But how, Anna wondered, could she have failed her mother while still a child too young to know evil, let alone do it …?
There was only one possible answer. She hadn’t failed at all.
The adoption was not her fault. And—another blinding flash of light—it might not have been her mother’s fault, either!
She studied this revelation for a long time. “You didn’t even try to erase my guilt over Nan’s death, did you?” she said suddenly. “You nurtured it.”
“You really mustn’t let things distress you to the point where—”
“You wrecked me.”
“Wrecked you?”
Gerhard had come to stand in front of her and was reaching out to grasp her shoulders, but on hearing these words his body became as immobile as if she were the Gorgon reincarnate.
“You knew I felt guilty because I’d been adopted, knew I blamed myself for not being good enough for my real mother. But you took my guilt and stood it on its head, until it wasn’t my guilt anymore, it was my mother’s.”
“And why not? Wouldn’t most people see that as a natural way of regarding it, of trying to come to terms with it?”
“‘Most people’ haven’t got the first idea of what my real mother went through before she decided to give me up, any more than I have. The agony. The fear. Suppose she was poor, rejected by her parents … my God, I don’t even know why she had me adopted, and if I don’t, you certainly don’t. You just pretended to.”
“You’re rambling.”
“No, I’m learning. Waking up at last. My mother gave me away when I was born, and that was her betrayal of me, you said, not my fault but hers. And all my life’s been dedicated to believing that, and ensuring the betrayal never happened again.”
“For God’s—”
“Be a better traitor than your mother, that’s what you said.” Anna smiled a brittle smile. “Quote: ‘If you’re worried about being betrayed, do it yourself. Do it fast, do it first.’ End … of … quote. Oh, what a fool I’ve been! Because I was so infatuated with you, I let you do it. I’d have believed anything. I made it easy for you!”
“Anna!”
But she had jumped off the tombstone and was striding toward the house. She knew in her heart that he was her enemy. If she was to have any chance of saving herself, she must fight him as he had fought her: deceitfully, with evil intent, to the last gasp of breath in her body.
She could afford to take no prisoners in her war with Gerhard Kleist.
CHAPTER
26
NATO’s chief negotiators assembled at a pleasant house near Crowborough that overlooked two thousand acres of Sussex farmland owned by the Ministry of Defence.
Albert waylaid Fox and Shorrocks in the paddock while they were on their way from the helicopter up to the house. As they approached, he squared his shoulders, swallowing a couple of times in an effort to summon saliva into his dry mouth. This would be a make-or-break meeting for him. He knew it wasn’t going to be easy.
“Progress.” He had to shout to make himself heard above the noise of the Bell Jet Ranger’s rotors.
“You’ll have to be quick,” Shorrocks brayed. “Half Europe’s waiting for us in there and they’re dancing up and down.”
“Hold the chopper, I’m due back soonest.”
Fox showed the pilot two downturned thumbs and the engine died. “Let’s try the stables,” he said.
The farm had once housed a livery; there was plenty of space for a crash conference.
“Why have our glorious allies been assembled here tonight?” Albert asked, plonking himself down on a bale of straw.
It was Fox who answered. “They’re hopping mad. Word’s leaked out about what Krysalis might contain. We asked them to trace a woman, but we didn’t tell them the file enabled the Warsaw Pact to switch off its tactical computers and save electricity.”
“So you’re soothing?”
“Trying to. There’s a new deadline.”
“What?”
“Redman was forced to bring in the State Department. State is giving the company another four days to sort out the mess, failing which, they intend to call off the Vancouver summit. That leaked out, but the rest of NATO don’t know the reasoning behind it, and we aren’t allowed to tell them the whole story.”
“I see.” Albert looked down at the straw. “Rats.” He sighed, apropos of nothing in particular. Then he raised his head. “Give me a contract,” he said tersely.
Shorrocks looked at Fox. No one spoke for a long time. Then Fox said, “It’s still too early.”
“Look—”
“No, you look.” Shorrocks impatien
tly glanced at his watch. “Tell us your news, and if there’s time, we’ll discuss your position later.”
“I need to know—”
“You don’t need anything.” Shorrocks sounded bleak. “Report.”
Albert stifled his anger. He knew he wouldn’t get anywhere unless he gave them something solid in exchange. He cautiously began to put his cards on the table. From his vantage point, the hand looked incredibly thin.
“It shapes up like this,” he said. “There’s a psychology guy called Kleist. Anna Lescombe was seeing him for ages. They had an affair.”
Albert outlined most of what he had learned at the Lamonts’ restaurant, omitting the inconvenient detail that Kleist and Anna hadn’t lunched there for the past two years. He paused. Now came the hardest bit.
“Ex-husband told me this morning that she’s always had problems,” he went on, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “Acute depression, wanting to kill herself, maybe harm the baby. That kind of thing.”
Fox and Shorrocks exchanged glances. “Interesting,” said the latter.
“This woman is very disturbed,” Albert resumed. “She’s a traitor, she’s mental, and unless something’s done about her—”
“Yes, but wait a minute,” Fox said. “That all happened a long time ago. Juliet’s a teenager now. Anna Lescombe’s long since cured of whatever it was, presumably.”
“Besides,” Shorrocks put in, “you’ve only got the ex-husband’s word for it. Hardly the most reliable of witnesses, I’d have thought.”
“No, you’re wrong.” Albert knew he could defeat that ploy, at least. “Her old medical records turned up after lunch. And sure enough, she had been referred to one Gerhard Kleist, on the basis that she was a potential suicide. She went into therapy and it looks as though she never came out of it again.”
“How long ago?”
“Nineteen seventy-three.”
“God!” Shorrocks made a face. “Sixteen years. In therapy all that time? I don’t believe it.”
“But they’ve undoubtedly been seeing each other ever since! The Lamonts said so. How long are you going to keep on farting about, playing games with NATO’s security?”
The stables were lit by a single low-power bulb, making it hard for Albert to read the other two men’s expressions. He wanted that contract, needed it with a deeply rooted intensity that was no longer exclusively concerned with money. Anna Lescombe was a traitor. A communist, clearly. She had gone the same way as England was going, down the drain, and, like the other rats in this stable, she had to be eliminated, “negotiated,” in the SAS regiment’s detached-sounding phrase. So obvious. But why couldn’t the others see it?
“How come none of that showed up on her husband’s vet?” asked Shorrocks.
“It did show up. Indirectly.”
“Explain.”
Albert again fought to master his impatience. “Remember that note in the file about Anna Lescombe having lunch with a German? Same restaurant. Kleist was the German.”
“Why the hell didn’t Five cotton onto that?”
Shorrocks had put the question to Fox, but it was Albert who burst in with an answer. “Either it was too long ago to be caught in the net, or her earlier medical records were already missing by that time, or I don’t know what. It happens often enough. My guess is that Kleist got his hooks into her, they became lovers, something much more than doctor-patient.”
“Control-agent, for example?”
“I’m sure of it,” Albert said confidently. “Think what a golden opportunity it was: therapist gains access to the wife of a top civil servant… magic! So next we need to see Kleist’s case notes on the lady.”
“Can you arrange it?” Shorrocks asked, and Albert heaved an inaudible sigh of relief. They were nibbling the bait. At last!
“Easy,” he said. “Kleist’s vanished. He was supposed to have lunch at their usual restaurant yesterday, when I was there. No show. Can you check the computers, see where he’s gone? Anna Lescombe’s with Kleist, I’d bet my life on it.”
“She’s somewhere in Greece,” Shorrocks said.
Albert looked at him. “Tell.”
“Greek immigration came up with the goods. Private plane, chartered in France, landed at a flying club outside Igouminitsa. That’s on the west of the Greek mainland, opposite Corfu. Pilot and two passengers, one male, one female. The flight plan showed them on their way to Athens, but the pilot reported engine trouble and requested an emergency landing. Then it turned out that the female passenger was sick, so they got special permission to clear immigration then and there.”
“Anna Lescombe being the sick party?”
“Right,” Shorrocks confirmed. “The other passenger was traveling on confetti, passport issued in the name of a dead man.”
“That’s Kleist.”
“Could well be. He claimed he was a doctor and he had the lingo off pat.”
“He said he was taking her to a hospital, I suppose?”
“Got it in one,” Shorrocks agreed. “But we know he didn’t, because the Greeks have checked. One lead, though: someone may have seen them boarding a speedboat and heading off west.”
“Where would that take them?”
“Corfu, or any one of half a dozen smaller islands. Of course, they could have doubled back. The Greeks are combing the place now, but …” Shorrocks shrugged.
Islands, Albert thought savagely. That meant crossing the sea. Perhaps a confrontation on water…. His skin crawled, settled itself again. You’ve done it before. No problem. Absolutely not.
“If that’s all you’ve got for us …” Fox had been fidgeting with his watch for the past few minutes. His eyes were hooded with tired folds of flesh that Albert hadn’t noticed before.
“One more thing,” Albert said. Forget the island, forget the bloody sea. Concentrate! “David Lescombe.”
“Ah.” Shorrocks folded his arms and leaned back against a beam. “The Americans now reckon he was in this from the start. They want him, as they chillingly put it, neutralized.” He jerked his head toward the house. “Some of that lot are bound to take the same line.”
“Neutralized …” Albert was startled. The word opened up a whole new ball game, rich with fascinating possibilities. Louis Redman’s thinking had obviously moved on since they’d last spoken. Suppose he ended up having not one contract, but two….
He had yet to land one contract, he reminded himself bitterly.
“You don’t think the CIA was behind that attack on Lescombe in Cornwall, do you?” he asked.
“No,” said Fox.
Thank God, Albert thought. Rein the Yanks in, foreign operatives we definitely do not need. But Fox was speaking again.
“That was probably HVA. We’d better go in …”
Albert stood up, recalling the day at the Cornish farm. German friends, the girl had said to David, “Tell your German friends …” “Why pick on HVA?” he asked.
They were outside now, and nearing the house.
“Ah,” Shorrocks said. “You’re not up to date…. Did Fox tell you about the lead picked up by Athens-Six, the young Greek who was interested in faxes?”
“Yes.”
“They put tabs on him, then they lost him.”
“I know.”
“But do you know what happened next? They dug around and discovered that he’s been snatched off the street. Word is, HVA ran the op.”
The three men had almost reached the front door, but now Albert stopped dead. “Are you seriously telling me,” he began slowly, “that East Berlin actually does now know where Anna Lescombe is and who she’s with?”
“If the Greek boy talked, yes, it looks like it,” Shorrocks confirmed. “We have to proceed on the assumption that he received his orders directly from Kleist, face to face, and that he knows how to get in touch with him to report back. So unless HVA has lost its notoriously heavy touch—”
“The boy will have talked.”
“You can bet on it. It fo
llows that the East Germans will know all about that bloody fax, too, of course.”
Albert’s mind raced ahead. “And that means HVA could want to talk to David Lescombe, find out what he knows, whether he has some connection with Kleist, for example—so that’s why you think the man in Cornwall—”
“Could have been HVA, yes. Your very brief description might fit a number of candidates, although our money’s on a character called Barzel.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s disappeared and none of HVA’s other London people have.”
Albert thought with the speed of light. “David Lescombe,” he said urgently. “You must let him run.”
“We’ve only got four days,” Fox said doubtfully.
“Doesn’t matter. If he’s guilty and makes a break for it, we’ve got him cold. If not, he may, just may, lead us to la femme whom we are so busily cherch-ing. How can we lose?”
“I’ll tell you how,” Fox said, again looking at his watch. “We can bloody well lose him when he runs, that’s how.”
“Not,” said Albert, “if you give me a contract.”
“I don’t follow that,” Shorrocks snapped. “Why should—”
“Because if you give me a direct, personal stake in finding the woman, and Lescombe’s heading straight for her, I’ll stick to him like glue.” Albert drew a deep breath. “I guarantee it.”
“What, no kill, no fee?”
“Right.”
When Shorrocks still hesitated, Albert played his last card.
“I’ve put a lot into this,” he said. “Solid legwork, with plenty of results. I’ve demonstrated my good faith, up to the hilt. But I won’t be used indefinitely. Let me loose, or I quit.”
“You can’t.”
“I can if the regiment needs me. And it will need me soon, I promise you that.”
Shorrocks looked at Fox. “A private word …?”
Albert paced about while they moved a few yards away and talked in low voices. His heart was beating fast enough to surprise him; until this moment he hadn’t realized how much this operation had come to mean to him.
Anna Lescombe was part of a conspiracy, directed against England. A dreary, uniform England, admittedly, a place in many ways hardly worth saving … but still England, his country. And she was laughing at the people sent after her, kissing her lovely fingers at them….
Krysalis: Krysalis Page 25