by Morris West
“Any other variants like that?”
“A couple. There are two overnight visits to Milan. The diary notation for these is an acronym, SVEEO. Claudine again made the bookings and charged them to Larry Lucas. He did not explain what the acronym meant. She didn’t ask him. He was that kind of guy. He could be very brusque if you caught him on the wrong day.”
“How does she feel about him?”
“We haven’t asked. We haven’t done that sort of intelligence roundup yet. How could we? We were supposed to be doing just a snap audit on the office, not on the individual. However, apart from indicating that Lucas was exacting—the impression was that she respected the guy, even liked him.”
“No surprise in that. Larry was a very likable fellow.”
Suddenly, a notation on the screen caught my eye: a ten-day absence from the office, not covered by travel vouchers. I asked what that meant. Giorgiu Andrescu had the answer on the tip of his tongue.
“Mr. Lucas had invited the principals from each side, with their own advisers, to a week’s cruise round the Balearic Islands: Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza. Apparently a logjam was building up and he thought this might be a good way to clear it.”
“Who made the charter arrangements?”
“I assume Lucas did.”
“But the charter doesn’t show up in the audit. That would have had to be a largeish item.”
“I agree; but the fact is, neither the contract nor the payment is recorded. There is, however, a diary note: Out-of-Paris conference authorized by Mr. Emil Strassberger. One has to think that for some reason settlement was made through the New York office.”
I made a note of the dates and told Andrescu I would refer the matter to my father. I asked whether he had anything more to show me.
“No. What you’ve seen is all we’ve got. I’ll give you a printout before you leave.”
“Thank you. Meantime, keep the file active. I’ll feed you whatever new information I get.”
“May I make a suggestion?”
“Go ahead.”
“At the moment, under our existing instructions, we’re handicapped and grossly underused. Believe me, Mr. Strassberger, all you’ve seen today is old-hat junior-grade storage and retrieval. But once you give us a free hand, you’ll be surprised at the information we can deliver. You don’t ask and we don’t tell you where it comes from; but we do guarantee its authenticity. Think about it, Mr. Strassberger. Talk about it with your father.”
I promised him I would think about it. I also thought very seriously that before Giorgiu Andrescu was thirty he and his peers would be running the world, because they would control access to all the world’s secrets. I had the uneasy feeling that no matter how much we paid them to serve our interests, they would always be holding a spare ace up their sleeves.
When I went to his office in the late fall of that Monday afternoon, my father was in a dark mood. The stock market was falling dangerously fast, and he had spent all day trying to hedge his positions around the world. Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sydney, and Singapore had all shut up shop. New York had steadied a little before the close of business. The West Coast was still fluttering about within a narrow margin. When I asked him how he was faring, he shrugged unhappily.
“We’re holding, Carl, but it’s a goddamned bazaar out there: pimps, harlots, hucksters, and sellers of snake oil. No sooner do you find yourself a foothold than the raiders move in and try to cut it out from under you…I’m getting tired, son, beginning to think it might be nice to have someone mount a raid on me. Right now, if the price was right, I’d take the money and run.”
“Would you really?”
“Try me!” He summoned up a reluctant smile. “A drink to say good-bye to a lousy day. Join me?”
“Thanks. I could use one too.”
While he was pouring the liquor he talked to me over his shoulder.
“Tell me about your day.”
I told him about Giorgiu Andrescu and the missing vouchers for Larry’s ten-day cruise. My father burst out laughing. He laughed so immoderately that the decanter shook in his hand and some of the whiskey splashed on the glass top of the liquor cupboard.
“There! That’s exactly what I mean. It’s a crime what we pay the Corsec people for what they are pleased to call security. They’re like the old sorcerers, peddling black magic! The reason there’s no financial record of Larry’s charter cruise is very simple: He never made the trip. He talked about it with me. I told him he could do whatever he thought best for the deal. I did say to him, however, that he ought to think twice about such a maneuver. I’ve been in that position many times. Everything seems to grind to a halt. Nobody’s got a single new idea. The gears are frozen.
“I suggested to Larry that, instead of taking his troubles away with him, he should walk away from them and be private for a while: unwind, free up the gears. I couldn’t put a name to it then, as I can now, but obviously he was in a deep depression. He talked about coming home for a week. I talked him out of that. I suggested he give himself a total break from business and family. The deal was on track, it wouldn’t hurt to let it coast awhile…The reason there are no vouchers is that Larry finally accepted my advice but insisted on paying for his own holiday.”
“Wherever he went, none of the reservations were made from his office.”
“I can understand that. If you want a complete break, you don’t let anyone know where you’re going. What else did Andrescu tell you?”
“Nothing you don’t already know. He gave me the same printout you have. But he did suggest that if we gave them free hand and didn’t ask questions about their sources, they could deliver a lot more information.”
“And how much more does that cost us? Already we have them on a fat retainer.”
“Why not offer a reward for information leading to the discovery of Larry Lucas?”
He thought about it for a few moments and then nodded his agreement.
“If they’ll come at it, fine—but it has to be a handshake deal, no documents. We can’t risk an invasion-of-privacy suit. We depend on them for clean information, they depend on us for prompt settlement.”
“How much are you prepared to offer?”
“A quarter of a million, tops.”
“I’ll try it; but there’s something else you and I have to decide right now. What are we going to tell your senior people here? What am I going to tell the staff in Paris?”
“The truth—part of it, at least. Larry has done a big job for the house of Strassberger. Everybody profits from that. His financial records are impeccable. Larry, however, has succumbed to a depressive illness and on the advice of his physician has taken extended leave to recuperate. This is not a business scandal but a painful family misfortune. The press response will be minimal, because no crime has been imputed or committed. There is an element of personal tragedy in the situation of a successful man, stricken in a moment of triumph. Our staff will be discreet, because they’ve all got deals cooking and the Strassberger name is their shield and protection.
“Once that news is planted and circulated, then you, Carl, can gently insert the supplements—what may happen in such episodes: suicide, flight…I know it’s a handicap in your inquiries, but any other course could damage us and would certainly be ruinous to Larry’s later career—if he has one.”
As always, I had to admire the swift, pragmatic fashion in which he had summarized and addressed the situation. At the same time I noted how much the experience—and perhaps the guilt—had aged him: nevertheless, I could not spare him Dr. Levy’s blunt message. I tried to phrase it as tactfully as I could, but he waved me on impatiently.
“Say it, Carl! Say it! Otherwise it will stick like a fishbone in your craw.”
While I was talking he crossed to the cabinet again, splashed more Scotch into his drink, and tossed off half of it at a gulp. It was the first time in my life I had ever seen him take refuge behind a highball glass, and I was curiously shocked. He heard me ou
t in silence and then perched himself on the corner of his desk while he sipped slowly at the rest of his liquor. Finally, phrase by deliberate phrase, he set down his confession.
“Dr. Levy is quite correct. In one sense, I have no right at all to judge Larry. I can’t share his suffering because I can’t even conceive of its nature. I’ll admit, too, that I drove him too hard and offered him too little praise or credit. You’ll never know, Carl, how much I hated losing you from the business and the family. In certain lights, in certain moods, I tended to see Larry as an intruder, taking over my daughter and your birthright in the business. Sure he was paying with toil and blood for his interest, but I couldn’t admit that to myself, let alone confess it to him. Right here and now there’s a small, nasty voice reminding me that I might even be glad of what’s happened to Larry if it brought you back into the company.”
I knew what he needed from me at that moment: some gentling words, some expression of understanding, if not hope, for the dynastic survival of the Strassberger family. He wasn’t asking for oaths and promises, just enough reassurance to lighten the burden of the moment. I couldn’t give it to him. The same niggardly imp which plagued him was whispering in my ear too, telling me that I should not, could not, make any concession that might later be held against me as a pledge of service. So—God help me!—I let the moment pass and the good words remained unsaid.
The rest of our talk was banality: who among senior staff should be informed first; who were the stout hearts, who could be trusted with secrets, and who were the gossips in the marketplace; how I should answer questions about my function with the company; what authorities and documents I would need for Paris—and was Paris the right place to begin my inquiries? We debated that one until it was time for the pair of us to go home and share the cocktail hour with my mother.
After that, I was committed to dinner with Madeleine and a last walk with her through the thickets of a difficult marriage.
The evening was a long-drawn-out affair. First there was my bedtime story for the children: Marianne, a blond beauty, five years old but endowed with the wisdom of centuries, and Laurence Emil, two years her senior, already complaining about the tyranny of the women in his life.
The stories I told them were Aesop’s fables. They are very short and they are also easy to illustrate with quick cartoon sketches: the fox and the grapes, the greedy dog dropping his bone into the water. Each child was tucked under the covers with a good-night kiss and a private icon from Uncle Carl perched on the bedside table. Uncle Carl crept out of each room enriched by a brief vision of innocence and haunted by the image of another man fleeing headlong across a plague-stricken landscape.
Dinner was an easy meal. The same mother had trained us both to honor the cook and enjoy the food, so we left the skeletons hanging in the cupboards and talked lightly of pleasant matters: childhood memories, old friends and their new adventures in love or out of it, what I was doing and why I wasn’t planning to get married, and how easily I could turn into a gray-beard laboring over an interminable manuscript in a wintry barn.
By the time the meal was over, we were both a little manic on memories. The sound of the mantel clock chiming ten imposed a sudden prickling silence on us both. Madeleine stood up, led me into the drawing room, then curled up defensively in the armchair opposite mine.
“You look just like Father, when he’s playing Grand Inquisitor,” she said.
“I feel like an invader. Please, try not to be angry with me.”
“I’m not angry, but I can’t help feeling embarrassed.”
“You said Larry left all his documents here in the house?”
“Yes.”
“His pocket diary? His address book?”
“They’re both here.”
“What about his clothes?”
“Part of his wardrobe’s in Paris.”
“Where?”
“At his hotel—Le Diplomate. They store personal effects for regular guests.”
“I thought he was finished in Paris.”
“He knew he’d have to go back on business arising out of this recent deal, as well as on routine company matters. It was something we all took for granted.”
“Has anyone checked Le Diplomate to see if the clothes are still there?”
“Yes. They’re still in storage, as he left them.”
“Have you been through his clothes here?”
“Every garment that has a pocket in it—nothing, nothing, nothing!”
“His study, his desk, his files…?”
“Those too. The Corsec people have been through everything. That Mr. Andrescu was like a ferret in a rabbit hole!”
“To the best of your knowledge, are there any other women in Larry’s life? Any affairs?”
“To the best of my knowledge, no. But if there were—”
She broke off. I waited a moment, then prompted her.
“If there were...?”
“I hope I’d be able to cope with it. Dr. Levy has taught me to understand that at certain critical moments Larry has no sense of moral responsibility at all, to me, the children, or anyone else. He’s not joined to us in any social sense. He is simply a spectator. We are like actors on a movie screen.”
“But when we first talked, you described him as a highly intelligent man: a good husband, you said; a loving father.”
“I also said that at certain moments reason goes out the window, that he’s an actor playing one role after another—and watching himself as he does it…And since we’re talking about women, let me tell you that Larry can be a wonderful lover. The problem is he knows it—as a good actor knows how to handle an audience, while remaining detached from it.”
“Does he act like this with you too?”
“Occasionally with me—but not when he’s himself. You may not believe that; but I can distinguish one state from the other.”
“But you do admit Larry’s a manipulator?”
“Yes.”
“How can you bear that?”
“Sometimes I can’t.”
“What sort of women attract him—at a party, for instance?”
“When he’s on the climb, it’s the aggressive beauties, the challengers. When he’s on the downward run”—she gave a small rueful laugh—“it’s the tender ones, the comforters, the old-fashioned motherers like me! Even in his wildest moments he needs to know there’s a safety net, because he knows that sooner or later he’ll come tumbling down from the mountain.”
“So where do I look for him now?”
“On the high slopes and the wild side.”
“That doesn’t tell me much.”
“I think you have to start in Paris.”
“Why?”
“He’s been working there all these months. He planned this exit, his escape, from there. My guess is that’s where he procured whatever new documents he has.”
“But why would he go back on his tracks?”
“Carl, all this is a guessing game, but there are things Larry used to say about the city and the people that contain a clue. One phrase he used stuck in my mind. He said, ‘Paris is a haunting place. It’s as I imagine Rome must have been, drowning in the backwash of a vanished empire…Algeria, Africa, Indochina, the Americas, the Pacific Islands—the whole world is different when you look at it from the Eiffel Tower.’”
“So you’re saying he’d start his flight from there?”
“I can’t be sure. I’ve talked this out with Dr. Levy. She believes that this act of fugue—of desperate retreat—will turn into a macabre adventure. The adrenaline will start pumping again, the brain chemistry will change, and he’ll be launched into another manic episode.”
“And how long could that last?”
“I don’t know.” She faltered but managed to hold her composure. “It seems I don’t know anything anymore. Look! You’ve never experienced a manic episode. You may have seen one but not been able to identify what it meant.” She was instantly animated, an actr
ess eager to demonstrate a scene. “This is Larry on a high. The day’s over, it’s been a good one. He comes home almost at a run. He sweeps me into his arms, demands that I make the drinks. While I’m doing that, the kids are swarming all over him, thrilled to be in his company. He’s a whole circus in himself. I’m drawn into the performance. He drives us all along like a ringmaster…
“I see what’s happening: I try to slow down the whirl of action. I can’t. Larry’s out of control. The kids are getting hysterical. Something is bound to happen—it always does—a glass is broken, Marianne falls and hurts herself, the game ends in tears. Larry goes off to bathe and change. I am left to clear up the mess and calm the little ones and wonder which Larry will be down for dinner: the happy one, oblivious of the chaos he has caused, or the other one, perched on the cusp of change, moody, withdrawn, resentful, afraid of the dark which he knows will soon envelop him again. I have to be ready to treat with either one on a plane of normality. The children are settled. I remind him to kiss them good night. I ask him to uncork the dinner wine, to try a spoonful of the sauce, tell me if there is enough spice in it…
“It’s hard labor, Carl. If he’s on the downturn it’s labor lost. If he’s still on the upswing, he resents the distraction. All my attention must be focused on him—To hell with the sauce and the spices, I’ve got the most wonderful plans!’ They do sound wonderful. So it’s easier to go with the swing than to fight it, and the lovemaking afterward is so wonderful I can almost forget the fear that came first and the grief that will follow sooner or later…“Would you pour me a brandy, please?”