by Paul Moomaw
“New passport, visa, driver’s license—everything.” He pulled out the passport, opened it. “You are Senor Francisco Hernandez—same initials, you see, so you don’t even need to buy new hankies—of Mexico City.”
He handed the passport to Hesse, who examined it cursorily. He knew he could trust Meissner to have the work done perfectly. He saw that the photo in the passport was actually of him.
“How did you get my picture?”
“I took it last summer, when you were sitting in the garden. I wanted a picture of you—a remembrance.”
“I am flattered.” But Hesse also felt a little uncomfortable.
“You are quite dear to me, my young friend,” Meissner said. He patted Hesse’s knee again, and let his hand remain there a little too long. Hesse felt himself shrink. He raised the snifter of doped brandy and gulped it down all at once. Meissner took the glass and filled it again.
“Now have a little more, to help wash the taste of the other stuff away.” Hesse sipped the brandy more slowly this time.
“I shouldn’t be taking your bed,” he said.
“You need it more than I do. I will be fine. And, anyway, there’s nothing else in the house that would fit you, you’re so big. You’re so very big.” Meissner gazed intently at Hesse, who sipped on the brandy, beginning to feel the effects of the alcohol and drugs. The pain in his ribs was fading; no, it was not really gone, but it was as if it didn’t matter any more, as if his head had become disconnected from his body. His eyes strayed again to Meissner’s belly. After a while he realized he was staring and looked up. Meissner gazed intently at him, his eyes glittering, a smile playing at his lips.
Hesse felt the beginning of a blush. He closed his eyes tight and held out the glass.
“I think I will sleep now,” he said.
He felt Meissner’s fingers take the glass from his hand, stroking his own fingers as they did. Then Meissner’s hand pressed his knee again.
“Yes, you sleep now. Sleep soundly.”
“You are very kind,” Hesse murmured, sinking into a wave of drug-induced euphoria.
“Don’t think about it. Sleep.”
Hesse thought he had more to say, but opening his mouth to speak seemed difficult; it was easier to slip into the delicious, fuzzy waves generated by the drugs. His eyes closed. He opened them once; Meissner was smiling and nodding. Or was it he, himself, who nodded, making the rest of the world slide up and down before his face? His eyes closed again. He decided to open them one last time, but somehow the intention slipped his mind.
Suddenly he was awake again, or not him, not the grown Facundo Hesse, but a twelve-year-old boy, lying terrified in the dark of a Buenos Aires night, eyes tightly closed, knowing his father was in the room with him again, that it would be another one of those nights, keeping his eyes closed so as not to have to see the awful, hungry look in his father’s eyes, and making loud, loud music in his head, as loud as possible, with crashing cymbals and blaring trumpets, so as not to have to hear his father’s moans of passion, or really feel what his father was doing to him.
Then he woke more fully, remembering that he was grown, and not in Buenos Aires, and that his father was dead—yet still the hands touched him, fondling his groin, caressing his thighs, pinching his nipples.
It’s a dream, he thought. I’m asleep, and having a bad dream. He shut his eyes tighter, trying to ignore how his penis stiffened, responding as it always had when he was a boy, making him want to die with shame and revulsion. But the touches were real, and the irresistible slickness of mouth on him, and the moans that he shouldn’t have been able to hear because his father was dead.
He forced himself to open his eyes. Meissner leaned across him. licking his penis, his head turned to gaze up at him.
“What are you doing?” Hesse pushed weakly at Meissner, too groggy to realize that his arms were under the cover. “Stop that! Don’t do that.” His voice broke, became that of a small boy.
Meissner lifted his head. “Let me, my darling. I have to.” His hand continued to fondle Hesse’s crotch.
It was what his father had always said to him, until Hesse the boy had finally stopped protesting and let him do what he wanted.
“No!” Hesse tried to push again, while Meissner started sucking almost desperately at him. He got his arms free, started to sit up, but then his body betrayed him. He felt the beginnings of an orgasm, tried to fight it, tried to distract himself from it, and finally lay back and let it happen, feeling sick, wanting to vomit, wanting to die, just as he had when he was a young boy.
Hesse lifted himself on one elbow. His ribs hurt again, but he hardly noticed them in the greater pain of betrayal. Meissner still lay on top of his crotch, rubbing his cheek against Hesse’s penis, moaning and clucking like some obscene hen.
“You bastard,” Hesse cried. “You’re just like my father.” Then he had his hands around Meissner’s throat and was squeezing, tighter and tighter.
Meissner tried to resist, and Hesse started shaking him like a rag, dimly aware that he was causing more damage to his ribs, and not caring.
At some point, Meissner’s hands dropped to his side, and he died, quietly, without a fuss, passing imperceptibly from life to death, without even closing his eyes, while Hesse continued to squeeze and shake. Finally Hesse dropped the body and let it slide to the floor. He sat for a long time, sobbing silently at what he had done, and what had been done to him. Then, drained of tears, he sat a while longer, staring off into space, not thinking or feeling anything except the muted throbbing of his ribs.
After a long time, he didn’t know quite how long, Hesse got up and dressed himself. He pulled the bedcovers all the way down to the foot of the bed. Then he picked Meissner’s body up, surprised at how light and frail it was, laid it carefully onto the mattress, and pulled the covers up again. Meissner’s eyes remained open, and Hesse tugged them shut.
He poured himself some brandy, then noticed the bottle of capsules, and wished he could take one; but he knew it wouldn’t be safe. The brandy would have to do for now. He dropped the pills into his jacket pocket, and picked up the envelope that contained his new identity.
Passing the dresser, he saw the little silver straw, and picked it up. It had belonged to a man of his own country, once, a gaucho who used it to sip mate on lonely nights under the stars of the pampas. It should go home again. He pocketed the straw, walked to the door, and looked back at the bed. Meissner looked natural lying there. He could almost have been asleep.
Another wave of anger and revulsion swept through Hesse. He wondered how he could have let himself get so close to the older man, how he could not have known what he really was. When he was a boy, he had worried about himself, had thought he must be some kind of queer, because his body had responded to his father’s touching. He had shoved those doubts away long before, had buried them under a thick layer of machismo.
Now he felt them trying to return.
“No!” he said, and shook his head violently enough to make his ribs hurt. He turned and fled through the door.
Chapter 43
Ilona Horthy stood on the sidewalk, a sullen frown on her face.
“Up there, on the second floor.” She nodded up toward the large apartment building across the Leinzner Strasse. “You’re sure Herr Meissner approves?”
“Of course.” Alain Delon smiled and gave her a gentle shove toward the street. “Go on across. Take us to your friend’s apartment.”
“I’ve never been there. I just know this is the address, and that Chet said they lived on the second floor.”
“Ca va. That’s fine. Just go ahead. We’re right behind you.”
“Just because he wasn’t at the embassy doesn’t mean he’ll be at his home, you know?”
“Let me worry about that.” He gave her another push, harder this time, and she stumbled briefly, then strode across the street with short, abrupt steps.
“What good is this Tarbell going to do us?” Ors
ine, walking at Delon’s side, spoke in French.
“Use your head,” Delon replied in the same language. “That Austrian dwarf is somewhere with my plutonium. I want it back.”
“He’s probably dead. I cut him pretty bad. I can tell those things, you know.”
Delon stepped onto the curb. “Keep going,” he said to Ilona, then reverted to French. “Maybe he’s alive, maybe he’s dead. And maybe he and the plutonium are tucked away somewhere, or maybe the police have picked him up. Either way, we may need help—finding the stuff, or getting it back from the cops. Tarbell is CIA; that means he can cut through a lot of shit if necessary.”
“What makes you think he will?”
Delon snorted. “He will. I know too much. He and his people have to treat me with kid gloves, see?”
“Your word against theirs, when it comes to dirt, non?”
“Non! Absolutement. I recorded every telephone conversation I have had with his superior, the Parker fellow.” Delon laughed. “I even have a picture of Tarbell, standing like a middle-aged tourist in the Librairie Francaise, handing me a wad of dollars.” Delon wagged an index finger at Orsine. “You should know by now, I don’t take chances.”
They stood at the top of a flight of stairs. A wide, short hallway extended before them, one door on each side. There were no name plates or other means of identifying the residents.
“I don’t know which one,” Ilona said.
Orsine shouldered past her with a bump, drawing a hiss and a sneer. He stepped up to one of the doors and banged on it. There was no response. He knocked again, more loudly.
The other door, across the hall, opened, and Susan Tarbell peered out.
“Niemand wohnt dort. No one lives there.”
Delon stepped toward her. “Are you Madame Tarbell?”
She nodded.
“I must speak with your husband. It is quite urgent.”
“He’s not home.” She inched back, closing the door so only her face showed.
“Perhaps you can tell me how to reach him. It’s very important.”
She shook her head quickly from side to side. “I’m sorry. No.” She started to close the door.
Orsine leaped forward and threw his shoulder against the door, knocking it inward, cracking Susan in the forehead in the process. She stood there, dazed, as he forced his way past her.
Ilona stepped to Susan’s side. “Cochon!” she shouted after Orsine. “Schwein! Pig!”
Delon paused and smiled, putting his face practically into hers. “Ah, you are a linguist. How admirable.” He turned to Susan. “I hope you aren’t hurt, Madame Tarbell, but perhaps now you can see the urgency of our mission.”
Susan, her face white and her eyes a little unfocused, stared at him. “Who are you people?”
“What’s happening, momma?” The voice came from a bedroom. Orsine sprinted through the door. There was a scrape of furniture and the beginning of a scream that ended abruptly with a muffled whimper, and Orsine reappeared with Elaine Tarbell in his grasp.
“Be careful, pig,” Ilona said. “She’s blind.”
Orsine grinned and goosed Elaine, who screamed and spun, trying to slap him, following his laughter and swinging wildly as he backed away, until she tripped into a chair and crashed hard onto the floor. She lay there, sprawled awkwardly, sobbing.
“Someone will kill you for that, some day, cochon,” Ilona said in heavily accented French.
Orsine grinned and shuffled toward her. “You want to try it, bitch?”
Delon stepped between them. “Grow up, Orsine. Business comes first. Always.” He waved toward Elaine. “Help her up,” he said to Ilona. Then he turned to Susan. “I apologize for that, Madame Tarbell. You must, however, tell us how to reach your husband. Right away.”
“I don’t know.” Susan’s voice was weepy, confused sounding. She swayed slightly back and forth. “I really don’t know where Chet is. He doesn’t tell me those things.” Her eyes widened as she stared at Delon. “Go away now. Please go away.”
“Ca va,” Delon said to Orsine. “If we have them, we will soon have Tarbell, non? Take the mother down to the car. And no silly stuff, understand?” He glanced at Ilona, who still supported Elaine in her arms. “You help her downstairs.”
“Where are we going?”
“First, Herr Meissner’s lovely house on the lake. Our stupid Austrian friend Peter is Meissner’s man. If he’s still alive and functioning, he will certainly run to his boss. After that, who knows?
Chapter 44
“Damn!” Gabriela’s voice floated through the blackness of the wine cellar, interrupting Pray from a half dream, half daydream state. “My watch is broken. What time is it?”
Pray’s legs, which had been crossed over each other, cramped him. “I don’t wear a watch,” he said, stretching his legs out slowly and wincing as they fought back. I’m getting old, he thought.
“You’re kidding.”
“I never kid around in pitch black wine cellars.”
“How can you get anywhere on time?”
“Punctuality is the thief of time. Oscar Wilde said that.”
“Not now, Adam!”
“The truth is, I’m always losing them, or breaking the bands. Anyway, somebody else always has one.”
“Great.” Pray sensed Gabriela coming toward him before he heard the scrape of her approach. Her hand found him, and she settled next to him against the wall.
“It’s your moon,” she said.
“My what?”
“Your moon. I looked you up. Your moon is in Aquarius and your sun is in Libra.”
“That’s why I don’t wear a watch?”
“Right. Because that combination makes you willful and stubborn. You always expect to get your own way, and you never prepare for the worst.” She snuggled closer. “You’re afraid to get close to women, too.”
“If you knew my mother, you’d understand that.”
“Maybe. But on the other hand, you were born in the year of the rat, and I was born in the year of the ox, and a Libra rat goes extremely well with a Leo ox.”
Pray didn’t know what else to say, so he said, “Oh.” They fell silent briefly.
“That was a nice piece of work you did on Hesse,” Pray said finally. “He sounded like a hen with a hotfoot.”
Gabriela giggled. “I enjoyed it, too.” Pray felt her stretch and wriggle a little. “It was one of the very first techniques I ever learned in kenpo; can’t even remember what it’s called. Isn’t it funny? If you asked me, cold, to go through those moves, I wouldn’t have remembered them at all. But when I needed them they were there. I didn’t even have to think.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it?”
“I suppose.” She sighed noisily. “I wish I knew what time it is.”
“Don’t want to miss breakfast?”
“I don’t want to be too early or too late using these.” Something sharp poked Pray in the arm, and he jerked away.
“What was that?”
“My tools.”
“You’ve got lock picks with you?”
“I’m never without them. It’s just that, unlike Larry Biven, I don’t have a neurotic need to show off with them.”
“More and more impressive. While I’ve been lying here preparing my last will and testament, you’ve been picking a time to break us out of here. What did I ever do before I met you?”
“Remember that question later, sweetie.” Gabriela got to her feet. “Can you tell which way the door lies?”
Pray grabbed her leg and guided her across him, then pointed her and gave her a light push.
“That way, I think. You sure we’ve waited long enough?”
“Who knows? My bladder’s pretty sure.” Her voice drifted away, then there was a bump, and she yelped.
“I found the door,” she said. Then, after long moments of silence. “A door to somewhere, anyhow. And it has a keyhole. Feels big, primitive.”
She stopped talki
ng again, and Pray stared into the darkness, which was no longer utterly black, but lit by floating, colored hallucinations that he knew were the productions of his own nerve endings.
A muffled click brought him cautiously to his feet.
“I think I got it,” Gabriela said.
Pray scuttled in her direction.
“Keep talking, while I make like a bat,” he said. But before she could speak again, he had bumped up against her.
“You sounded a lot farther away.”
“Shh! I’m going to open the door a little.” Silence. “Damn, it won’t budge.”
“Tug harder.”
“I’m not tugging; I’m pushing.”
“Try pulling.”
“There’s no handle.”
“Let me get next to you. If we both use our fingernails, maybe we can get it to move.”
He dug his nails into the edge of the door and began to pull.
“Shit,” Gabriela said.
“What’s the matter?”
“I broke a nail.”
“Big deal. You’ve got more.”
“Shut up and pull.”
The door moved a quarter of an inch. Pray slipped his fingers further along its edge and dug his nails in again. The door moved enough for him to get a real grip on it.
“Now we have it,” Gabriela said. Both of them tugged again.
The door suddenly gave and opened so quickly that both of them stumbled. Blinding light struck Pray’s eyes, and he closed them briefly, trying to adjust.
“Jesus, they put a spotlight on us,” he said. Then opening his eyes a slit, he realized that the light was, in reality, dim. As his eyes adjusted from total darkness, he saw that the light came from the end of a long, low-ceilinged corridor, through a dirty window. There was no sign of anyone around. Quickly, silently, he moved to the window. It was too filthy to see through clearly, but obviously opened onto the outside of the house.
“It’s almost dawn, isn’t it?” Gabriela’s voice was right at his ear.
“This way out, I hope,” Pray said, fumbling at a catch on the bottom of the window. It moved, stiffly, and Pray pushed on the window. With a metallic creak, it swung up and out, into what turned out to be the walled garden at the rear of the house. The air outside was colder than it had been earlier in the evening, and the ground still bore traces of rain.