Carrion Comfort

by Dan Simmons

  Saul held the door open for her as she carried her bag in. The cottage was just as she had left it eight days earlier; small kitchen and dining room combined in a long room with fireplace: simple wooden table with three chairs, another chair by the fireplace, small windows spilling rich sunlight onto whitewashed walls, and two bedrooms. Natalie carried her bags into her room and tossed them on the big bed. Saul had set fresh flowers in the white vase on her nightstand.

  He was brewing coffee when she came out to the main room. “Good trip?” he asked. “No problems?”

  “No problems,” said Natalie. She laid out some dossiers on the rough wood of the table. “Sarah Hapshaw is getting to see all the places Natalie Preston never saw.”

  Saul nodded and set a white mug of rich, black coffee in front of her. “Any problems here?” she asked. “None,” said Saul. “None were expected.”

  She added sugar from a blue bowl and stirred. She realized that she was very tired. Saul sat down across from her and patted her hand. Even though his thin face was etched with planes and lines, she thought that he looked younger than when he had worn a beard. Three months ago. Centuries ago.

  “More news from Jack,” he said. “Would you like to take a walk?”

  She glanced at her coffee. “Take it with you,” said Saul. “We’ll walk toward the hippodrome.” He stood up and went into his bedroom for a second. When he returned, he was wearing a loose khaki shirt with the shirttails out. It did not quite hide the bulge of the .45 automatic in the waistband of his shorts.

  They strolled west, downhill, past the fences and orange groves to where sand dunes crept toward the cultivated fields and green private grounds of villas. Saul walked out from the top of a dune onto the surface of an aqueduct that rose twenty-five feet above the sand and stretched for miles toward the cluster of ruins and new buildings near the sea. A young man in a white shirt ran toward them, shouting and waving his arms, but Saul spoke to him quietly in Hebrew and the man nodded and turned away. Saul and Natalie walked along the rough top of the aqueduct.

  “What did you say to him?” asked Natalie. “I mentioned that I knew the trinity of Frova, Avi-Yonah, and Negev,” said Saul. “Those three have been excavating the sites here since the nineteen fifties.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Yes,” said Saul. He stopped and looked around. The Mediterranean lay to their right; a riot of low new buildings caught afternoon sunlight a mile ahead.

  “When you told me about your place here, I imagined a shack in the desert,” said Natalie.

  “That is what it was when I came here right after the war,” said Saul. “First we built and enlarged Kibbutzum Gaash, Kfar Vitkin, and Ma’agan Mikhael. After the War of Independence, David and Rebecca built their farm here . . .”

  “It’s an estate!” said Natalie.

  Saul smiled and sipped at the last of his coffee. “The Baron Roth-schild’s place is an estate. That is now the five-star Dan Caesarea Hotel down there.”

  “I love the ruins,” said Natalie. “The aqueduct, the theater, the Crusader City, it’s all so . . . old.”

  Saul nodded. “I missed that sense of overlay of ages when I was in America.”

  Natalie removed the red shoulder bag she had been carrying and set their empty coffee cups in it, wrapping them carefully in a towel. “I miss America,” she said. She hugged her knees and looked out over the expanse of sand that lapped against the yellow stone aqueduct like a tan and frozen sea. “I think I miss America,” she said. “Those last days were so nightmarish . . .”

  Saul said nothing and the two sat in silence for several unstrained minutes.

  Natalie spoke first. “I wonder who went to Rob’s funeral.”

  Saul glanced at her, his polarized glasses reflecting the light. “Jack Cohen wrote that Sheriff Gentry was buried in a Charleston cemetery with members of several local agencies and police forces attending.”

  “Yes,” said Natalie, “but I mean who was close to him. Were there any family members there? His friend Daryl Meeks? Anyone who had . . . had loved him?” Natalie stopped.

  Saul handed her his handkerchief. “It would have been madness for you to go,” he said softly. “They would have recognized you. Besides, you were in no condition. The doctors in Jerusalem Hospital said that your ankle had a very bad break.” Saul smiled at her and accepted his handkerchief back. “I noticed almost no limp today.”

  “No,” said Natalie, “it’s much better.” She returned Saul’s smile. “OK,” she said, “who goes first?”

  “You, I think,” said Saul. “Jack had some very interesting news, but I want to hear about Vienna.”

  Natalie nodded. “Hotel registries confirmed that they were there . . . Miss Melanie Fuller and Nina Hawkins . . . that was the Drayton woman’s maiden name . . . the Hotel Imperial . . . 1925, ’26, and ’27. The Hotel Metropole in ’33, ’34, and ’35. They could have been there other years, in other hotels that lost their records because of the war or some other reason. Mr. Wiesenthal is still checking.”

  “And von Borchert?” said Saul. “No hotel registration,” said Natalie, “but Wiesenthal confirmed that Wilhelm von Borchert rented a small villa in Perchtoldsdorf just outside of the city from 1922 until 1939. It was torn down after the war.”

  “What about . . . the others?” asked Saul. “Crimes.”

  “Murders,” said Natalie. “The usual assortment of street crime, political killings . . . crimes of passion and so forth. Then, in the summer of 1925, three bizarre, inexplicable murders. Two important men and a woman— a prominent Vienna socialite— murdered by acquaintances. In each case, the murderers had no motives, no alibis, no excuses. The papers called it ‘summer insanity’ because each of the killers swore they had no memory of their deeds. All three were found guilty. One man was executed, one committed suicide, and the third . . . a woman . . . was sent to an asylum where she drowned in a fish pond a week after she was institutionalized.”

  “Sounds like our young mind vampires were beginning their game,” said Saul. “Getting a taste for blood.”

  “Mr. Wiesenthal couldn’t understand the connections,” said Natalie, “but he kept researching for us. Seven unexplained murders in the summer of 1926. Eleven between June and August of 1927 . . . but that was the summer of an abortive Putsch . . . there were eighty workers killed in a demonstration that got out of hand . . . Vienna authorities had more to worry about than the deaths of some lower-class citizens.”

  “So our trio changed their targets,” said Saul. “Perhaps the deaths of members of their own social circle put too much pressure on them.”

  “We couldn’t find any crime reports that fit in the winter or summer of 1928,” said Natalie, “but in 1929, there were seven mysterious disappearances in the Austrian resort town of Bad Ischl. Vienna press talked about the ‘Zauner Werewolf’ because all of the people who disappeared— several of them very important figures in Vienna or Berlin— had last been seen in the chic Café Zauner on the Esplanade.”

  “But no confirmation that our young German and his two American ladies were there?” asked Saul.

  “Not yet,” said Natalie. “But Mr. Wiesenthal points out that there were scores of private villas and hotels in the area that no longer exist.”

  Saul nodded in satisfaction. Both of them looked up as a formation of five Israeli F-16s roared low over the Mediterranean, headed south.

  “It’s a beginning,” said Saul. “We will need more detail, much more detail, but it is a beginning.” They sat in silence for several minutes. The sun was getting lower in the southwest, throwing the intricate shadows of their aqueduct farther across the dunes. The world seemed wrapped in a red and golden glow. Finally, Saul said, “Herod the Great, a fawning sycophant, started this city in 22 B.C., dedicating it to Caesar Augustus. It was a center of power by 6 A.D., the theater, hippodrome, and aqueducts all gleaming white. For a decade, Pontius Pilate was prefect here.”

  Natalie frowned at hi
m. “You told me most of this when we first came here in February,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Saul. “Look.” He pointed to the dunes lapping high on the stone arches. “Most of this has been buried for the last fifteen hundred years. The aqueduct we’re sitting on was not excavated until the early sixties.”

  “So?” asked Natalie. “So what of Caesar’s power?” asked Saul. “What of Herod’s ingratiating schemes? What of the apostle Paul’s fears and apprehensions when he was imprisoned here?” Saul waited several seconds. “All dead,” he said. “Dead and covered with the sands of time. Power gone, the artifacts of power toppled and buried. Nothing left but stone and memories.”

  “What are you saying, Saul?” asked Natalie.

  “The Oberst and the Fuller woman must be at least in their seventies by now,” said Saul. “The photograph Aaron showed me was of a man in his sixties. As Rob Gentry once said, they are mortal. They will not rise with the next full moon.”

  “So we just stay here?” snapped Natalie, her voice rising in anger. “We just hunker down here until these . . . these monsters die of old age or kill each other off?”

  “Here or somewhere else safe,” said Saul. “You know what the alternative is. We, too, must take life.”

  Natalie stood up and paced back and forth on the narrow stone wall. “You forget, Saul, I’ve already taken life. I shot that awful boy— Vincent— the one whom the old lady was using.”

  “He was a thing by that time,” said Saul. “You did not take his life, Melanie Fuller did that. You released his body from her control.”

  “They’re all things as far as I’m concerned,” said Natalie. “We have to go back.”

  “Yes, but . . .” began Saul. “I can’t believe you’re serious about not going after them,” said Natalie. “All the risk that Jack Cohen has taken for us in Washington, using his computers to dig up all this information. My weeks of research in Toronto and France and Vienna. The hundreds of hours you’ve spent on Yad Vashem . . .”

  Saul stood up. “It was just a suggestion,” he said. “At the very least, it might not be necessary for both of us to . . .”

  “Ah, so that’s it,” said Natalie. “Well, forget it, Saul. They killed my father. They killed Rob. One of them touched me with his filthy mind. There are only the two of us and I still don’t know what we can do, but I am going back. With you or without you, Saul, I’m going back.”

  “All right,” said Saul Laski. He handed her the shoulder bag and their hands touched. “I just had to be sure.”

  “I’m sure,” said Natalie. “Tell me about the new stuff from Cohen.”

  “Later,” said Saul, “after dinner.” Touching her lightly on the arm, they turned back for the long walk along the aqueduct, their shadows mingling, bending, and twisting along the high banks of encroaching sand.

  Saul prepared an excellent dinner of salad with fresh fruit, homebaked bread he called bagele which looked and tasted nothing like a bagel, mutton cooked in the Oriental style, and sweet Turkish coffee. It was dark when they went into his room to work and turned up the hissing Coleman lantern.

  The long table was covered with folders, stacks of photocopied documents, piles of photographs— the top ones showing concentration camp victims staring passively out— and dozens of yellow pads filled with Saul’s tight scribble. Sheets of white paper covered with names, date, and maps of concentration camps were taped to the rough white walls. Natalie noticed the aging photocopy of the young Oberst and several SS officers smiling from their newspaper photograph next to an 8 × 10 color print of Melanie Fuller and her manservant crossing the courtyard of their Charleston house.

  They sat at heavy, comfortable chairs and Saul pulled over a thick dossier. “Jack thinks that they’ve located Melanie Fuller,” he said.

  Natalie sat straight up. “Where?”

  “Charleston,” said Saul. “Her old house.”

  Natalie slowly shook her head. “Impossible. She couldn’t be that stupid.”

  Saul opened the file and looked at the sheets typed on Israeli Embassy stationery. “The Fuller house had been closed pending final legal determination of the status of Melanie Fuller. It would have taken some time for the courts to declare her legally dead, much longer for the estate to be worked out. There seemed to be no surviving relations. In the meantime, a certain Howard Warden appeared claiming to be Melanie Fuller’s grandnephew. He showed letters and documents— including a last will and testament dated January 8, 1978— deeding the house and its possessions to him as of that date . . . not in the case of her death . . . and giving him full power of attorney. Warden explained that the old lady had been concerned about failing health and the onset of senility. He said that it had been a technicality, that he fully expected his great aunt to live out her life in the house, but with her disappearance and presumed death, he felt it was important that someone maintain the place. He is currently living there with his family.”

  “Could he really be a long-lost relative?” asked Natalie. “It seems unlikely,” said Saul. “Jack managed to get some information about Warden. He grew up in Ohio and moved to Philadelphia about fourteen years ago. He had been assistant grounds superintendent for the city park for the last four years, actually living in Fairmount Park the last three . . .”

  “Fairmount Park!” gasped Natalie. “That’s near where Melanie Fuller disappeared.”

  “Exactly,” said Saul. “According to sources in Philadelphia, Warden— who’s thirty-seven—had a wife and three children, two girls and a boy. In Charleston, his wife fits the same description, but they have only one child . . . a five-year-old boy named Justin.”

  “But . . .” began Natalie. “Wait, there’s more,” said Saul. “The Hodges place next door was also sold in March. It was purchased by an M.D. named Stephen Hartman. Dr. Hartman lives there with his wife and their twenty-three-year-old daughter.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” asked Natalie. “I can understand why Mrs. Hodges wouldn’t want to return to that house.”

  “Yes,” said Saul and pushed his aviator’s glasses higher on his nose, “but it seems that Dr. Hartman is also from Philadelphia . . . a very successful neurologist . . . who suddenly quit his practice, got married, and left the city in March. The same week that Howard Warden and family felt a need to move south. Dr. Hartman’s new wife— his third— and friends were amazed that he married again— is Susan Oldsmith, the former head nurse in the intensive care wing of Philadelphia General Hospital . . .”

  “There’s nothing terribly unusual about a doctor marrying a nurse, is there?” asked Natalie.

  “No,” said Saul, “but according to Jack Cohen’s inquiries, Dr. Hart-man’s relationship with Nurse Oldsmith might have been described as coolly professional up to the week they both resigned and were married. Perhaps more interestingly, neither of the happy newlyweds had a twenty-three-year-old daughter . . .”

  “Then who . . . ?”

  “The young lady whom Charleston now knows as Constance Hartman bears a strong resemblance to a certain Connie Sewell, a nurse in intensive care at Philadelphia General who resigned the same week as Nurse Oldsmith. Jack hasn’t been able to make a certain match, but Ms. Sewell left her apartment and friends with no word of where she was going.”

  Natalie stood up and paced back and forth in the small room, ignoring the hiss of the lantern and the dramatic shadows she threw on the wall. “So we assume that Melanie Fuller was hurt or injured in the craziness in Philadelphia. Those newspaper stories talked about a car and body being found in the Schuylkill River near where the FBI helicopter crashed. It wasn’t her. I knew she was alive somewhere. I could feel it. Okay, so she’s hurt somehow. She gets this park guy to take her to a local hospital. Did Cohen check the hospital records?”

  “Of course,” said Saul. “He found that the FBI— or someone posing as the FBI— had been there before him. No record of a Melanie Fuller. Lots of old ladies in the hospitals, but none who fit the pro
file of Ms. Fuller.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” said Natalie. “The old monster covered her tracks somehow. We know what she can do.” Natalie shivered and rubbed her arms. “So when it came time to convalesce, Melanie Fuller had her group of conditioned zombies bring her home to Charleston. Let me guess . . . Mr. and Mrs. Warden have an invalid grandmother with them . . .”

  “Mrs. Warden’s mother,” said Saul with a slight smile. “Neighbors haven’t seen her, but some commented to Jack about all the sickroom equipment that had been carried in. It’s doubly strange because Jack’s inquiries in Philadelphia showed that Nancy Warden’s mother had died in 1969.”

  Natalie paced back and forth excitedly. “And Dr. Whatshisname . . .”

  “Hartman.”

  “Yeah . . . he and Nurse Oldsmith are there to keep up the first-class health ser vice.” Natalie stopped and stared. “But, my God, Saul, it’s so risky! What if the authorities . . .” She stopped.

  “Precisely,” said Saul. “Which authorities? The Charleston police are not about to suspect that Mr. Warden’s invalid mother is the missing Melanie Fuller. Sheriff Gentry may have become suspicious . . . Rob had an incredible mind . . . but he is dead.”

  Natalie looked down quickly and took a deep breath. “What about Barent’s group?” she said. “What about the FBI and the others?”

  “Perhaps a truce has been called,” said Saul. “Possibly Mr. Barent and his surviving friends can tolerate no more publicity of the kind they received in December. If you were Melanie Fuller, Natalie, fleeing from fellow creatures of the night who wanted no more notice of their bloody doings, where would you go?”

  Natalie slowly nodded. “To a house that’s received national attention because of a series of bizarre murders. Incredible.”

  “Yes,” said Saul, “Incredible and incredibly good luck for us. Jack Cohen has done all he can do without eliciting the wrath of his superiors. I’ve sent him a coded message thanking him and asking him to hold further investigations pending word from us.”