Vanishing Point

by Morris West

  “There are two here I daren’t meet just now,” I told her. “This has to do with Larry’s disappearance. I’m leaving. I’ll go straight back to Le Diplomate. You come when you’re ready. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I’d come with you, but I have to finish my business with Céline. I’ll make your apologies. I’ll most probably be late. Leave a key for me with the concierge.”

  “Do me one quick favor, please. Look outside and see if I can get to the door in a hurry.”

  She went out and back in a matter of seconds. She thrust a catalog into my hands.

  “Go now! Bury your nose in this. Go!”

  I went out at a fast walk, my face half hidden by the catalog. The moment I hit the street, I broke into a run, intent on grabbing a taxi and getting as far away as I could from the menacing presence of a young woman who—God help me!—did nothing more menacing than peddle travel services and occasionally peddle herself as part of the deal.

  And yet, and yet…there was more to it than paranoia and panic. Read upside down or sideways, the script said the same thing. Claudine Parmentier had launched herself head first into a love affair with Liliane Prévost. There was no way to guess at her relations with her partner, Anne-Louise, but it would be folly to depend on her loyalties to Strassberger or to Larry Lucas. As for myself, I had to be her last and worst enemy—unless she were disposed to pay me as the matchmaker!

  I flagged a cruising taxi and had him drive me straight back to Le Diplomate. From there I called Vianney at his home. He was not overly happy to hear from me. He was even less happy when I told him the love story of Claudine and Liliane from morning to evening of its first day.

  “And what in God’s name do you expect me to do about it? We gave her an executive contract at the beginning of the year. So far as I can see, she hasn’t breached it in any particular. Her sexual preferences are no business of ours. How can we know what secrets are exchanged in pillow talk? One wrong move on our part and we’d have the lawyers and the press crawling all over us. And we’d have the Lucas affair in big black headlines. You did the right thing tonight. You walked away without fuss.”

  “I’m glad you approve, Vianney.”

  “I myself am going to do the same thing: sit quietly and observe, and judge our people by their performance for us.”

  “You’ll be pleased to know my father agrees with you.”

  “You mean you’ve discussed this—this incident with him?”

  “This incident, no. I have talked to him about your declared policy of noninvolvement in the Lucas affair.”

  “And what did your father say?”

  “I’ll give it to you verbatim. ‘Vianney is running our business in Paris and running it well. Let him do that.’ I think I’ve done what I should in reporting on Claudine Parmentier. You feel no action is needed. That’s your decision. I remind you, however, that tomorrow there’ll be two lives on the line, Larry’s and mine. I’d hate to think we were put at risk by indiscretion or lack of vigilance—or simply pillow talk between lovers.”

  “You’ve made your point, Carl. I’ve taken it under advisement. If I sounded rude, I apologize.”

  “Please! Just keep the lines open for me. Tomorrow I’ll be over the hills and gone, but I’m still going to need a support system. Just don’t let the termites eat the stairs! Sleep well!”

  For me sleep would be long a-coming. I put on pajamas and dressing gown, poured myself a drink, and tried to watch an old Belmondo film on television.

  I was quickly bored, so I switched off the program and sat in silence trying to make sense of the swift madcap affair between Claudine Parmentier and Liliane Prévost. I had to assume that Claudine had revealed, or would soon reveal, her connections with Strassberger and that my own cover was seriously compromised, if not totally blown. How could I know what damage had been done? How could I mend it unless I reasoned with the worst possible situation?

  We had a lovesick, reckless woman in the office. We had a director blind to her defects and heedless of the caution he had been given. We had, behind them all, a shadowy but sinister character named Francesco Falco who had been in the luxury end of the warm-body business for a long time and would strongly resist any intrusion into his domain.

  It was a dark picture and I could find few patches of light in it. Maybe, just maybe, Claudine was still playing her role of mystery woman, with a restless heart and money to burn. Maybe, just maybe, she could continue the fiction, because she did not wish to compromise her career at Strassberger. Maybe she would not resent me enough to betray my connection with Larry Lucas. There were too many maybes to gamble on. My whole mission was at risk, because of my own poor judgment.

  I wished Arlette were there but I knew she would be late. She is a night owl with scant respect for time. I wanted to be awake when she came in. There were words to say and love to spend before we went our separate ways, she to her gallery in Nice, I to Milan clothed in my illusory armor: a set of spurious documents and a ramshackle personal history that I had not yet found time to memorize properly.

  There was a knock on my door. A bellboy presented me with a sealed envelope on a silver tray. He told me it had been delivered a few moments ago, by a lady. He waited resolutely on the threshold while I found my wallet and delivered his tip.

  The note was from Claudine. It was couched in the same mocking tone as her talk.

  Dear Carl,

  I behaved very badly today—and you, considering the provocation, behaved reasonably well. I’m still behaving badly, because I’m ignoring your good advice and diving headfirst into this little folie à deux with Liliane. I’m sure it won’t last very long. I’ll probably burn out before she does. However, I do owe you something for bringing us together. So here is my gift.

  I have not given away any secrets, either corporate or personal. Liliane believes what I have told her: that I have independent means, a private practice as a computer consultant, and a lover I’m not prepared to leave just yet. That seems to suit her too. She’s sensitive about her own affairs of the heart and she needs a lot of room to move. We’re a crazy lot, aren’t we?

  Anyway, I raised again the subject of her American protégé. I played out the jealousy game. What was so special about this male client? Finally, she told me the little she knew. His file is held in Milan by Falco. He is seriously rich. He does have mental problems and is keeping his head down. He carries a Dominican passport in the name of Lorenzo Lehmann. Clearly it was Larry Lucas! At this moment, as far as she knows, he’s still in Milan.

  You’d better believe all this. I’m not going to repeat it and I’m not going to be cross-examined on it. I was fond of Larry. I wouldn’t do anything to harm him. I like you too, but it takes longer to wash the starch out of your collar. Besides all this, I like my job and I want to keep it.

  Bonne chance!

  Claudine

  P. S. It may surprise you to know that Anne-Louise is very calm about what she calls my excursion. She tells me she’s become bored with my adolescent games and is disposed to take an excursion of her own!

  I read and reread the note until my head was spinning. I had an impulse to call Vianney and recant my earlier conversation. Then I remembered I wasn’t the Defender of the Faithful; that was Vianney’s chosen role. I called Andrescu at Corsec. Again they routed me round the mulberry bush until they found him. When I gave him Larry Lucas’s new identity, he was jubilant.

  “Great! Now we’re in business—provided your lady friend’s telling the truth.”

  It was a wise caveat, but it was one item too many for a very crowded day. I gave up on Arlette and made ready for bed. I was asleep almost before I hit the pillow and I didn’t stir, even when she crept in beside me in the small hours of the morning.

  Next day, over the breakfast table, Arlette and I staged our own small melodrama. I was the triggerman. In an hour or so she would be on her way home to Nice. I was jealous and, let me confess it, suddenly afraid of losing her. Th
e words came out of nowhere.

  “Will you marry me, Arlette?”

  She stared at me in disbelief.

  “Now where did that come from? Why now? Why here? What does marriage offer us that we haven’t got already? What are we now but a slightly shopworn Pierrot and Pierrette? What’s got into you?”

  “I don’t know. I just needed to say it.”

  “Since when?”

  “I don’t know that either. I’m asking you a simple question. Will you marry me, please?”

  “And you’d like yes or no before the coffee runs out?”

  “Look! I know I’m doing this the wrong way. But it’s the best I can say here and now.”

  “Why do you want to marry me? You know there’s no need.”

  “I have a need, Arlette! Suddenly, I have a need to say: This is my woman! This is the center of my world! This is the one person I’m prepared to live and die for!”

  “You can have any woman you want. Why me, whom you have already? I told you a long time ago we fit well together, but the notion of a permanent arrangement does not appeal to me. I see no reason to change. If you have one, you should explain it to me.”

  Which landed the hot potato straight back in my lap, and the discomfort made me nervous as a schoolboy.

  “I’m not sure I can explain it. I’ll try. Down there in Cagnes, in the studio, painting and studying, I knew exactly who I was. I knew exactly who we were: Pierrot, Pierrette, circling around the top of the music box, never quite together, never quite apart, with the happy music tinkling all the time.”

  “Is that such a bad thing?”

  “I’m not saying it’s good or bad. I’m just trying to explain it!”

  “Go on, please.”

  “This next part isn’t so easy. My father calls me to New York. My brother-in-law has taken off. He’s sick, a threat to himself and the family. Suddenly I’m back where I never wanted to be: son of the house, the heir who doesn’t want the patrimony but is sent out to find the prodigal and bring him home to enjoy the fatted calf.”

  “And you resented that?”

  “I did. I do; but it goes deeper than that. I discover there are risks—life-and-death risks possibly—for him and for me. I assume those risks, because that’s what it means to be the only son in our family. We take a certain pride in it too, and the working conditions are better than most; but that’s not the point.”

  “What is the point, Carl?”

  “For my family this is what it’s always been: duty, the debt of honor. I don’t grudge it and I’m paying it. But there’s something else—”

  I broke off because I had no words to name it.

  “What else?”

  “Please don’t mock me. Promise you won’t mock me.”

  “I promise.”

  “If anything happened to me on this search, I’d like to feel that there was someone other than my family to shed a tear for me and raise a toast to me and maybe say, ‘God rest the man I loved.’ I know I have no right to it, I’ve been selfish all my life; but I’d like to have it and I’d like you to be the one to raise the glass and say the prayer.”

  “But when you come back, and if you bring Larry back with you and all your fear now turns out to be a bad dream, what then?”

  “Then I’d still know what I know now: I love you, Arlette. I’d be happy to spend the rest of my life loving you.”

  She did not answer me immediately. She sat, elbows on the table, chin cupped in her hands, reading my eyes and my face. Then, very gently, she spoke.

  “I believe what you tell me. I feel the truth of it. I’ve seen the change you describe in yourself, though I can’t explain it—and you don’t explain it very well either. But I’m a skeptic about love, Carl. I don’t know how it begins or why it ends. What you offer me is wonderful. You’re kind. You’re intelligent. You’re rich, too. I know that if I asked for the moon you’d look for a ladder long enough to reach it and hand it to me. It’s tempting. God knows it’s tempting. But if I accepted now, I’d never forgive myself—and in the end I’m afraid you’d hate me for the bad bargain I’d offered you. You see, I love you too, Carl, but in my fashion, on my terms. You’re a Strassberger, an old-line absolutist. With you it has to be all or nothing. That’s what you’re really telling me, isn’t it?”

  “If that’s what it sounds like, chérie, I’ve made an awful botch of my first proposal!”

  Abruptly she pushed herself up from the table, walked to the window, and stood looking out at the lowering sky and the wheeling pigeons. When she spoke finally, there were tears in her voice and a flush of anger too.

  “I wish to God this hadn’t happened, Carl. I hate you for putting me through it when I wasn’t ready. Here’s what we’ll do. You go away, fight your family battle. When it’s over, come back and ask me the same question again. I’ll give you a straight answer, yes or no. Meantime”—she turned to face me arms outstretched—“meantime, let’s be what we are, enjoy what we have.” She tagged it with the old refrain, En ce bordeau ou tenons nostre estat—In this brothel where we ply our trade.

  Villon’s “Ballade of Fat Margot” was the subject of a running joke between us. This time we still managed to get a small laugh out of it. The Strassberger suite at Le Diplomate was a very expensive brothel indeed.

  An hour later she was gone, perched behind the wheel of her old blue van, which was stacked with her summer stock of canvases and my two suitcases, which she would hold for my return. I stood on the pavement and watched until she was lost in the traffic. Then I went inside to wait for Oskar Kallman, who was going to change Carl Emil Strassberger into Edgar Francis Benson.

  7

  FORTY-EIGHT HOURS LATER, when the Air France flight from Paris to Milan lifted off at seven-forty on a misty spring morning, I found myself, quite abruptly, in a state of psychic shock. The physical separation from earth was simultaneous with my psychic separation from my former identity. From this moment on there was no public act that could be attributed to Carl Emil Strassberger, whose former persona and all the evidence of its existence were sealed in an envelope and on their way to New York by bonded messenger.

  Every document I carried, even the tags on the new clothes I wore, affirmed that I was Edgar Francis Benson, born in Toronto, Canada, unmarried, a footloose amateur artist, of independent means with a small private coterie of buyers for his works. The odd thing was that I had no experience of being this person, no history of virtues or guilts, loves, hates, or even sexual appetites. It was as though I were in free fall, waiting for the first impact of reality.

  It came in the rush and bustle of Milan Airport, where I was met by Sergio Carlino, director-general of Corsec Italia S.p.A. I found him waiting by the luggage carousel with a large card inscribed with the name E. F. Benson. It was only when the crowd around the carousel had thinned out that I connected myself with the card. Sergio Carlino grinned at my discomfiture.

  “I’ve seen it happen many times. The most embarrassing moment is when you’re paged in a hotel lobby and you don’t recognize the name you signed in the register! In any case, welcome to Italy.”

  “Thank you.”

  “My name is Sergio. How do you prefer to be called?”

  “My given name is Carl. My nom de guerre is Edgar.”

  “Better we call you that from the start.”

  As he hefted my bags and led the way out to the parking lot, I had time to take stock of him. He was somewhere in his mid-thirties, tall, blond, and trim as an athlete—a throwback, perhaps, to one of the Lombards who swarmed through the Alpine passes in the sixth century and took possession of the river flats and marshes of the Po Valley.

  He had a firm handshake, a ready smile, innocent blue eyes, and an air of indolent arrogance, as if fourteen centuries of bloody history had purged him of all illusions about Anglo-Saxons and Americans, any Italians south of Florence, and most Europeans north of the Gothard tunnel. It was not that he uttered a single derogatory word. On the c
ontrary, he could not have been more courteous, but his courtesy itself was an expression of tolerance, which in itself conveyed a genial contempt.

  While we worked our way out of the airport traffic and toward the autostrada, he explained a little of his background. Schooled by the Jesuits, he had been for several years an investigating officer with the carabinieri, the military force which is concerned with the internal security of the Republic. He had resigned in mid-career, because Corsec was offering a sack of money and because, he confessed, it was easier to maintain a mercenary loyalty to Corsec and its clients than to cope with plots and counterplots and double standards within the service.

  “However,” he assured me amiably, “I still maintain my friendships and my access to valuable information—which is why Corsec bought me in the first place.”

  They seemed to be paying him with reasonable generosity. His vehicle was a chauffeur-driven Mercedes, with a glass screen to separate driver and passengers and some sophisticated communication equipment in front and rear. Carlino explained this too.

  “In Italy today, big business, politics, and the law are dangerous occupations. Once upon a time, most problems were negotiable on a live-and-let-live basis. Now civic virtue is the catchword, but endemic violence is the popular remedy. Even among the clients we serve there are conflicts of interest. I have to navigate with a certain care. So I have a bullet-proof vehicle and a former police driver trained in evasive action. I also have a bodyguard for my wife and child.”

  This seemed an appropriate moment to ask him about Simonetta Travel and its director, Francesco Falco. His reaction was an exclamation of contempt.

  “Boh! He was investigated years ago when I was still in the service. He began as a small-time smuggler running cigarettes and whiskey out of North Africa. Then he got into the expensive body business—illegal immigrants, some terrorists, some women. They were never able to able to nail him for anything, though they sweated him hard on more than one occasion. Now he’s legitimate, and nobody can prove he isn’t. This special service he advertises, this disappearing act, is a confidence trick in itself. There’s nothing illegal about dropping out of society, walking out on your family, starting a new life under a new name. There may be some illegal aspects to it but they’re very minor. For instance, you’re illegal now. You’re carrying a passport not issued by a government authority, but you’re not an absconding debtor, you’re not a fugitive criminal. So, on that side of things Falco is clean enough to get by.