'You're going already?' Freud asked Younger and Colette.
'Yes,' replied Younger. 'Oktavian is taking us to the station. Every moment we stay, we put you in danger.'
'Mrs Freud and I have been discussing it, Miss Rousseau,' said Freud. 'Let the boy remain behind. With us.'
'I couldn't,' said Colette.
'Why not? It would be a boon to Martha. We haven't had a child in the house for a long time.'
'But I couldn't,' repeated Colette.
'It might make your escape easier,' interjected Oktavian. 'The police are looking for a couple with a little boy. They're sure to be keeping watch at the railway stations.'
'I've never been away from Luc,' said Colette.
'Never?' repeated Freud. 'You left him to go to Braunau just the other day. With no assurance you would ever return.'
Colette frowned. 'There was only one thing in the world I would have done that for. And now I-'
'Fraulein,' said Freud gently but pointedly, 'you have had your brother in your care for six years and never obtained treatment for him. This was probably wise on your part, wise beyond your years, because the care he would have received almost anywhere in the world would have been useless or even detrimental. But you will be doing him a great disservice now if you deny him the treatment he needs. He is at a precarious age. If he remains as he is for much longer, it will likely have permanent effects on his adulthood.' Freud paused. 'I have an additional, medical reason for my proposal. Your brother will have a better chance at a cure if he is treated in your absence.'
'In my absence?' repeated Colette. 'Why?'
'He improves when away from you,' answered Freud. 'Younger, did the boy communicate with you when you were traveling with him?'
'Yes — he wrote me notes.'
'You didn't tell me,' Colette said to Younger.
'It's natural, Miss Rousseau, for the boy to do better outside his immediate family — and natural on your part to resent it.'
'I don't resent it.'
'No? Well, I can tell you nothing else right now, but you are almost certainly involved in his symptoms. Your behavior for the last six years and his are intertwined in some fashion. You may even be the cause of his condition.'
Younger could see that Colette was distraught. 'Can I speak with Stratham for a moment?' she asked.
'Of course,' said Freud.
They withdrew to the stairwell. 'Tell me I'm not the cause,' she whispered, desperately. 'Am I the cause?'
'I don't know.'
'What should I do?'
'Leave him here, without question,' said Younger. 'We may not make it out of Austria. If we're caught and he's with us, they'll put him in some kind of Czech institution — an orphanage or worse. He could be there for years.'
'But how will we get him back?'
'If we get out?' said Younger. 'Easily. We'll send someone for him.'
Colette steeled herself, and they returned to the courtyard. She hesitated — then put the question to her brother, asking what he wanted to do. The boy looked at Younger.
'You want my opinion?' asked Younger.
The boy nodded.
'Stay behind.' Younger decided to put it in terms of the courage Luc would need: 'It will be hard on you, but you'll be helping your sister and me. After we reach safety, you'll follow.'
Luc thought about it. His eyes were deep — deep enough, Younger suspected, to have seen through his tactic. Then the boy took a few steps until he was standing between Freud and his wife. He looked up at Colette, his expressionless face indicating that he had made his decision.
'Wire us the moment you can,' said Freud.
Outside the Westbahnhof railway station, policemen stood guard, demanding papers from everyone who went in.
'It's worse than I thought,' said Oktavian. 'I don't see how you'll get through.'
'The Czechs hold an anti-Semitic riot, and it's we whom they want to arrest,' said Younger disgustedly. They were still inside Oktavian's carriage. 'Is there another train station?'
'Several,' replied Oktavian, 'but the police are sure to be there too. There is another way, Doctor, if you're willing. Aeroplane. A French company began service just last month. The airstrip is small and nearly always deserted. The police may not think of it. The aeroplanes are quite safe, they say, but very dear.'
'What would you think of flying?' Younger asked Colette.
'Luc looked happy to be left behind, didn't he?' she answered. 'Almost as if he were glad to be away from me.'
Vienna's airport — the only one in Austria — consisted of a dirt landing strip with a single craft on it: a double-winged monoplane with the largest propeller on its nose Younger had ever seen. Oktavian was right: there were no policemen. Neither, however, was there anyone else, so far as they could see. No passengers, no ticket agents, no crew. The only building was locked.
Venturing around the back, they found two men drinking coffee and schnapps. One turned out to be the pilot, a Frenchman, who jumped eagerly from his chair when Oktavian inquired about the possibility of two passengers flying immediately to the nearest port.
'We're supposed to fly to Paris,' said the pilot with a Gallic shrug, 'but we're not particular. I could take you to Bremen.'
'Bremen would be fine,' replied Younger.
They agreed to a price. The pilot downed his schnapps and clapped his hands. 'Off we go then,' he said.
The aircraft boasted eight passenger seats. When the pilot had settled into the cockpit, he took an additional swallow from a hip flask and signaled a thumbs-up to his partner, who gave the propeller a strong tug. The engine churned into life. Oktavian, looking less enthusiastic about the plan he had originated, said goodbye to Younger and Colette at the foot of a small ladder leading into the passenger compartment.
'It's strange, Mademoiselle,' said Oktavian. 'All this time I've felt I knew you from somewhere else. A long time ago. You have no relatives in Austria?'
'Perhaps you knew my grandmother,' said Colette. 'She was Viennese.'
'That's it,' cried Oktavian. 'I must have met her. Yes, I can almost remember the event. I knew I had seen your face before. She was of noble birth, your grandmother?'
'Oh, no, she was very poor.'
'I would have sworn it was at some fine ball, and with some fine gentleman.'
'That can't have been my grandmother, Count Oktavian.'
'Well, it will come to me. But you mustn't call me Count. I don't count for anything.'
Taking off, the aircraft rolled alarmingly, but it achieved a semblance of stability on reaching altitude. They peered down at the blanket of snow beneath them — which was not snow, but clouds.
'I've never seen the top of a cloud before,' said Colette. 'Do you think God minds?'
'I doubt He'd begrudge us a view of His handiwork,' answered Younger. 'I'd be more worried about your toying with His atoms.'
'Why do you so mistrust radium?' she asked. 'You made me wear that absurd suit in Professor Boltwood's laboratory. Everyone else thought I looked like a sea diver.'
'Everyone else should have been wearing one too.'
'I wonder if it could explain radioactivity,' mused Colette. 'Dr Freud's death instinct. We don't have any idea why radium atoms split apart — but then we don't know why other atoms don't. Perhaps there is one force holding the particles together, and another one driving them apart. It would be just what Dr Freud described: two fundamental forces, one of attraction and one of repulsion.'
'Which is stronger?' asked Younger.
'I would say the force holding them together,' said Colette. 'That would explain why radioactivity releases so much energy.' A thought came to her: 'But that energy, when it's released — that could be the death force. Perhaps the splitting of the atom is death itself, in pure form. It could communicate the death force to other atoms, causing them to split apart.'
'And you wonder why I don't trust it,' said Younger.
'That could also explain radium's effect
on cancer,' replied Colette with growing excitement. 'No one has ever explained how radium cures cancer. Even Madame doesn't know. But Dr Freud was right: cancer cells are cells that have stopped dying. When radium is placed inside a tumor, perhaps it releases the death force, spreading it out over the whole tumor, transmitting it to the cancer cells, which makes them begin dying again. What are you doing?'
As Colette spoke, Younger had become distracted by a separate train of thought until finally he had risen from his seat. 'Pilot,' he called out. 'You said this plane was supposed to fly to Paris?'
'Oui, Monsieur,' said the pilot.
'Take us there.'
'Paris?' asked Colette. 'Why?'
'To see one of your heroes.'
Chapter Seventeen
Under the headline 'Invited to Mexico,' Littlemore read the following front-page story:
An invitation to President-elect Harding to visit Mexico was extended at a conference last night between Senator A. B. Fall of New Mexico, and Elias L. Torres, envoy from President-elect Obregon of Mexico. The invitation contemplated Senator Harding's attendance at the inauguration of President-elect Obregon in Mexico City on the twenty-fifth of this month. Whether the invitation will be accepted seems very uncertain and tonight there was no official statement from the President-elect. Senator Harding is exceedingly anxious to restore amity between Mexico and the United States, but his close advisers doubt the propriety at this time of the President-elect going to foreign soil.
Littlemore was riding a train back down to Washington. He stared out the window for a long time.
On arriving in Washington, Littlemore took a taxi directly to the Library of Congress, just down the street from the United States Capitol. There he asked for some basic facts and history concerning the country of Mexico; the librarian directed him to the World Book of Organized Knowledge. A half-hour later, his pace quickening, Littlemore went to the Senate Office Building.
'What's the matter?' asked Fall when Littlemore was let in to see him.
'I read the Mexico story in the paper, Mr Senator.'
'Now that's something I'm proud of,' said the Senator, stretching his arms and leaning back in his chair. 'The two presidents-elect of the two largest democracies in the world. It'll be a first. Harding doesn't want to go, but I'll persuade him. Obregon will pull his troops out of the mines and let us keep our oil wells, and all will be right with the world.'
'I don't think Mr Harding should go, sir.'
'You're giving me advice on foreign policy?'
'What if it was Mexico, Mr Fall?'
'What if what was Mexico?'
'What if it was Mexico, not Russia?'
There was a long pause. 'You ain't talking about the bombing, are you, son?' asked Fall.
'Remember what you asked me the first time I met you? What country stood to gain from the bombing, what country had the motive, what country would have felt it had the right to attack us?'
'Sure I remember.'
'Nobody had a bigger motive to bomb J. P. Morgan than the Mexicans,' said Littlemore. 'Morgan's been bleeding them dry — keeping every banker in the world from lending to Mexico for six years. That's not the only motive either. From what I hear, they hate us pretty good down there, sir. Been looking to pay us back for a long time.'
'What for?'
'The Mexican-American War.'
'What kind of-? That's ancient history, boy. Nobody even remembers that war.'
'They remember it, sir. We took almost half their land. Invaded them. Occupied Mexico City. Killed a lot of people. There were some atrocities. I think they think we look down on them, Senator Fall. On top of which they think we're taking all their silver and oil, getting rich while they're dirt poor.'
Fall considered. 'I was going to say that's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard, but maybe it ain't. This new envoy Torres — I'll tell you the truth, he didn't rub me the right way. Like he was hiding something.'
'Let's say they were getting ready to nationalize our oil wells,' Littlemore went on. 'They'd have to show us that even though our army can lick theirs, they can hurt us in a different way — a new way — that an army can't stop. Hurt us badly enough so it wouldn't be worthwhile to invade.'
'You're saying the bombing was supposed to show us how they'd fight if we invaded?'
'I'm saying that if you look at it from Mexico's point of view, it starts to make sense. An attack on Morgan. Revenge for our invasion. And a warning of what kind of damage they can inflict on us if we move in with our army after they take back the oil. All three at once.'
'In that case they'd have to be first-class idiots,' said Fall, 'because they forgot to tell us they were the ones who did it.'
'They wouldn't want to say it right out,' answered Littlemore. 'Then we'd have to send the army in, which is what they don't want. So they'd leave us a sign showing they did it, without giving us any proof.'
'But they didn't leave a sign.'
'They did,' said Littlemore. 'Do you know when Mexican Independence Day is?'
'No.'
'September sixteenth.'
Fall was silent for several seconds. 'You sure about that? Not the fifteenth, not the seventeenth?'
'September sixteenth, Mr Senator. And it's a big day for them, just like it is for us.'
'Well, I don't use the word irony much, but ain't that an irony? They were trying to show us they ain't so puny, but they're so puny we didn't even get the message.' 'Something else, Mr Fall. Two weeks before the bombing, Mr Lamont of the Morgan Bank was threatened. Lamont got it mixed up though. He thought a banker named Speyer was the one making the threat, but it wasn't Speyer. It was a Mexican consul — a guy named Pesqueira — who said that if Morgan didn't start letting money back into Mexico, there would be hell to pay.'
A thought came to Fall's eyes: 'Why, this envoy Torres, he may have been playing me for a fool. I believe I was a fool. They blow us to pieces, and I get the President of the United States to make peace with them — after they've seized our mines. Maybe they are planning to go for the oil next. Damn my eyes for a blind man.'
'We don't have any proof, Mr Fall. Not yet. And the missing link is still the gold.'
'That's right — what about the gold?' Fall's eyes moved back and forth. 'It can't be, Littlemore. You're telling me that by coincidence our gold was being moved on Mexican Independence Day?'
'I don't think it was coincidence, Senator. Like you said, maybe the Mexicans paid off somebody in our government — somebody in a position to arrange when the gold would be moved. I'm going to the Mexican Embassy, Mr Fall. I'm going to talk to this Torres. And Pesqueira.'
'By God, son, if you get to the bottom of this, I'll get you an embassy of your own. Where'd you like to be ambassador?'
'Not my line, Mr Fall.'
'Then how does Chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation sound?'
The Mexican Embassy, a substantial four-story house on I Street, had a damp and insalubrious odor in its foyer. Discoloration streaked its walls.
'You got mold in here, ma'am,' said Littlemore to the receptionist.
'I know,' she replied. 'Everyone says. Can I help you?'
The detective learned that Elias Torres, the new envoy, had not yet presented his credentials at the embassy, but was expected tomorrow.
Senor Pesqueira, however, was upstairs.
Roberto Pesqueira was a small man with well-oiled black hair, fair skin, an ink-thin mustache and small but perfectly white teeth. He showed no signs of unease when Littlemore introduced himself as an agent of the United States Treasury. If anything, he looked as if he might have been expecting the visit.
'I have reason to think you threatened a man in New York City two months ago, Mr Pesqueira,' said Littlemore.
'What man?'
'Thomas Lamont. Two weeks before the Wall Street bombing.'
Neatly folded white handkerchiefs were piled on one corner of Pesqueira's desk. He removed one of these and applied it to his t
eeth. 'Your emperor,' said Pesqueira.
'I beg your pardon?'
'Senor Lamont is the king on your throne. Everyone else is his lackey. Wilson, your so-called President, is his lackey.'
'You don't deny the threat?'
'The Morgan Bank strangled my people for six years,' said Pesqueira. 'Your government propped up a corrupt dictator in my country for twenty years. You occupy my country. You steal California from us. You warn us you will make another war if we do not change our constitutional laws. And you accuse me of threatening?'
'I'm just doing my job, Mr Pesqueira.'
'Really? You must have forgotten the first two words of the law of nations.'
'What would those be?'
'Diplomatic immunity. Your law doesn't apply to me. You cannot arrest me. You cannot search my home. You cannot even question me.'
'Nope. You're a consular agent, just like Juan Burns was,' said Littlemore, referring to a Mexican consul jailed in New York City for illegal weapons purchases in 1917. 'You don't have diplomatic immunity.'
'Forgive me, you are not as ignorant as I assumed; one gets so used to it with Americans. But I am not a consular agent anymore. My office is here now, as you can see, in the embassy — and all embassy officials, I'm sure you know, enjoy the immunity of the diplomat. Technically, you are on Mexican soil right now. You cannot even be here without my consent. Shall I call the police, Agent Littlemore?'
Littlemore hurried back to Senator Fall's chambers and, notwithstanding the protest of one of the Senator's assistants, knocked on Fall's door and strode through.
'Don't you come busting in here, boy,' said Fall, seated at his desk, white handlebar mustache contrasting sharply with a florid countenance.
'Sorry, Mr Senator,' said Littlemore. 'I need to know where I can find the Mexican envoy you were telling me about — Torres. Right away.'
'Why?'
'He's not on staff at the embassy yet. Can't claim diplomatic immunity. Can we find out where he's staying?'
'That's the sort of thing I'm good at,' said Fall. 'Go sit yourself down in my waiting room. Could take a little while.'
The Death Instinct Page 32