“It’s me, Donna.”
Thank God.” Then her relief turned to anger: “Have you any idea what kind of a day I’ve had to endure? What the hell did you mean by ‘
There’s no time for this. I have the tape. And I’ve played it. I think it’ll do the job.”
“How did ‘
“Just listen! The less said now the better. Did you hire a car as planned?”
He sensed the effort with which she limited her reply to the needs of the moment. “Yes.”
“How soon can you pick me up?”
“Ten minutes.”
“All right. Ten minutes. Corner of Constitution and Twelfth, eastbound side. I’ll be waiting.” And with that, before she could say another word, he put the telephone down.
FORTY-FIVE
Movement imposed security and a distance between them neither seemed sure they wanted to cross. Donna drove slowly east as far as the Supreme Court, then turned west along the southern side of the Mall as she listened to the tape. She must have listened to it two or three times, while Harry watched her from the passenger seat and tried to read her reaction from her face. Sorrow at the recorded proof of her onetirne lover’s treachery. Elation at the escape from her fugitive existence it promised to deliver. Gratitude for Harry’s recovery of it. She might have felt them all. But her expression revealed nothing.
Eventually, out on a dark and empty stretch of road near the Jefferson Memorial, she pulled in long enough to stop the tape, remove the earphones and say, still without looking at Harry: This will destroy Lazenby. I doubt it’s proof in the legal sense. But it’s good enough.”
“You don’t seem very pleased.”
“I don’t feel very pleased. I loved David. And Torben was a good friend. Their reputations won’t look much better than Lazenby’s when this is over.”
That can’t be helped.”
“We’re talking about your son, Harry. Doesn’t it matter to you what people think of him?”
“Not as much as what he thinks of me ‘
There you go with that stubborn present tense again. As if I can summon up a miracle for you.”
“Last night you seemed to believe you could.”
“I wondered whether you’d mention last night or simply pretend it never happened. Walking out on me was a kind of denial, wasn’t it?”
“Donna, I…”
“Don’t say you’re sorry. Please don’t say that.”
“I left without waking you so you wouldn’t have the chance to stop me keeping my appointment with Lazenby. No other reason.”
“You felt guilty, Harry. That’s the truth. And that makes me feel guilty too. Which I don’t like. For somebody old enough to be my father, you don’t handle your emotions with much maturity.” She sighed. “But you do work miracles, it seems. Even if the one you really want’s beyond you. How did you pull it off?”
“It was easy.” Though not as easy as he was about to make it sound. He had already decided Donna did not need to know or worry about Barry’s involvement in the affair. “I told Lazenby my partner was ill. During our meeting, he left the room for a few minutes. That’s when I retrieved the tape. It was where Torben said it would be. No problem.”
“No problem? Come on. Lazenby would never leave a stranger alone in his office. It can’t have been that simple.”
“He must be losing his touch. There’s the tape to prove it.”
“Yuh.” She tapped the cassette against the rim of the steering-wheel. “Reel-to-reel salvation. And you just hand it to me. Like shelling a pea.”
“It worked. Sometimes things do.”
“And now you’re going to say we need to move fast. That sitting here is just a waste of time.”
“Well, we agreed ‘
“Don’t tell me what we agreed. I remember. And you’re right. On just about every count. I would have tried to talk you out of it this morning. I happen to care about you. That’s why I haven’t already driven off into the night with the tape in my purse. Because I think you’re trying to get rid of me. And the reason has to be you’re afraid Lazenby will come after you. So you want me out of the way.”
“Of course I do. But only for safety’s sake. Lazenby suspects nothing.”
“I don’t know you well enough to tell if you’re lying.”
“I’m not lying. Take the tape and go. I’ll book us both out of the hotel tomorrow. Then I’ll catch a train to New York, call on Woodrow to set his mind at rest, and fly back to England. I’ll tell
Iris you’re going to contact Hector Sandoval and do your level best to persuade him to consider David’s case. Fair enough?”
“Oh, it’s fair. And I’ll do it. Just as soon as there’s so much adverse publicity slewing around Lazenby that coming after us no longer makes sense. But ‘
“How long?”
“A few weeks, I guess. Maybe less. The newspapers will bite our hands off for the story. But you can come back with me to Dallas and call Iris from there. Doesn’t it make sense to stick together now we’ve come this far?”
“It’s not what we planned to do. And the plan’s worked. Let’s not abandon it now.”
“This isn’t about the plan, Harry. There’s something you’re holding back.”
“There’s nothing.”
“What is it?”
“You ought to be on your way, Donna.” He looked at her, the shadows veiling her mouth and eyes, and steeled himself to go on lying as long as he needed to. He did not fear Lazenby. Not as much, anyway, as he feared the thicket of conflicting emotions he and Donna would enter if they stayed together. To go now was best. For them and David. But it hardly felt like it. “I ought to be on my way too.”
“I haven’t even thanked you, have I?”
“Make good use of the tape. And don’t take no for an answer from Sandoval. That’s the only thanks I need.” He opened his door and started to slide out, meaning to forestall their farewell. If they kissed, his resolution might crumple. If they said goodbye, they might fail to part.
“Harry Her hand touched his sleeve. He hesitated and looked back at her. She had leant towards him, into a shaft of yellow light cast by a street-lamp twenty yards away. She was confused and weary, as fearful as she was hopeful. She was not sure what to do. She trusted him. But she did not believe him. She needed time. But there was none to spare. “Look after yourself now. Not me. Not David. Not anyone. Just you.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve always been a selfish bugger.”
“I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.”
“I’m relying on it.”
“Do you really have to She stared at him, silently imploring him to make up her mind for her. “Can’t we ‘
“It’s OK, Donna. Go now.” He climbed out onto the pavement and closed the door, then stood in the inky overhang of the roadside trees and waited for her to drive away. A few moments passed, then the engine started and the car moved slowly off. Only when he was certain she did not mean to stop did he wish she would, instantly and intensely.
FORTY-SIX
Harry slept badly, alternating between shallow descents into fretful dreaming and long wakeful ruminations on the success of his visit to Globescope. The totality of that success the simplicity it had acquired in his mind was in some ways its most worrying feature. Could it really be so easy?
He rose well before dawn, bathed, shaved, breakfasted on black coffee and Marlboro cigarettes, then packed his bags and prepared to book himself and his absent neighbour out of the hotel. His departure was needlessly early for the itinerary he had proclaimed to Donna. But that had been a drastically edited version of his true intentions. If she had known what they were, she would have refused to leave without him. And the errands he had in mind were best run alone.
The first would take him to David’s house in Georgetown, which he had promised Hammelgaard he would search for records of David’s most recent hyper-dimensional research. He was hardly the ideal candidate to carry out such a task.
Nor was this the ideal time to attempt it. Donna, who would have known what to look for a lot better than him, would have denounced it as foolhardy when there was so much still to be lost and gained. But a promise was a promise, especially one given to a dead man. And Harry was about to leave Washington, conceivably never to return. He could scarcely bear to go without seeing his son’s home. The place had been unoccupied and unvisited for more than two months. It was not likely Lazenby was keeping it under surveillance. As risk-running went, this was small beer.
Besides, Harry told himself, if there was anything of value there, it ought to be removed for safe-keeping. Dr. Tilson would know what to do with it. One day, David might thank him for going to such lengths. That half a hope of earning his son’s gratitude was perhaps the clinching factor. And the one he could least have afforded to confess to Donna. She would not have said it was foolish and futile. But she would have thought it.
It would not take long. He could be there and back within the hour. And still make Union Station in time for the ten o’clock Metroliner to New York. That would allow him to spend a couple of hours in Philadelphia tracking down Isaac Rosenbaum before carrying on to see Hackensack. Carl Dobermann remained a loose end in David’s recent past. One Harry felt unable to ignore.
Donna would be at some Midwest airport by now, waiting for the first flight of the day to Dallas, with the tape safely stowed in her bag. He wondered if she was thinking of him just as he was thinking of her. But his habit of self-denigration would not allow him to believe it. She was probably already glad to have seen the back of him, grateful he had not tried to prolong the intimacy she should never have encouraged. Old enough to be her father as she had pointed out with wounding accuracy, but emotionally immature. It was not much of a testimonial. But he supposed it was the one he would have to settle for.
Maple Place was a cul-de-sac on the north-eastern fringe of Georgetown, within walking distance of Dupont Circle, a fact which lent a furtive haste to Harry’s approach. The taxi dropped him at the end of the road on Q Street, just short of the Rock Creek bridge which he envisaged David crossing each morning on his way to Globescope, formerly perhaps with Donna beside him, more recently for certain alone.
The properties were well-to-do townhouses, with expensive cars parked outside beneath trimmed and well-spaced trees. A man in an elegant overcoat was walking a King Charles spaniel before setting off for his no doubt prestigious place of work. And the pavements were so clean Harry felt obliged to stub out his cigarette meticulously and nudge the remains into the gutter with his toe. He had been told Globescope paid generous salaries. And now he saw the proof of it.
Number 18 Maple Place was a whitewashed brick replica of its neighbours, with sash windows and an imposing bottle-green front door. Harry stepped up to it, took the keys from his pocket and examined them: a Yale and a mortise matching the locks on the door and another smaller type. He wondered idly what it was for as he opened the door and stepped inside. Then an alarm started bleeping ominously. There was a box on the wall with lights flashing on a panel beside a small keyhole. Harry wrenched the key out of the door behind him, dropped the bunch in the process and only managed to switch off the alarm after it had given several ear-splitting wails.
He glanced out into the street and saw, to his relief, no signs of neighbourly concern. He closed the door with exaggerated care and moved down the hall. There were stairs ahead of him, an open door leading into a kitchen at the far end and another closed door to his left. He opened it and went through into a large lounge-dining room looking out onto the street.
A sofa and an armchair were arranged in front of the fireplace. A dining table stood against the right-hand wall, beneath a serving hatch, with four chairs tucked in around it. Another smaller gate-leg table stood by the window, one flap raised. A television, video and hi-fi occupied the space behind the door. Enough books and magazines to fill several bookcases were stacked in orderly piles either side of the fireplace. The room had a moved-in-but-not-yet-finished-unpacking feel to it.
There were no pictures or ornaments, unless the blade-end of an oar propped in a corner counted as one. To judge by the inscription on it, David had rowed with some success at Cambridge, a fact Iris had never mentioned. For one self-indulgent split-second, Harry imagined standing with Iris on some windy stretch of Cambridge riverbank, cheering their son on in a race. Then he fended the thought off, shaking his head like a horse troubled by a fly that will not give up. He reached out absently and touched the radiator next to the doorway.
It was warm. Scarcely hot, but certainly warm. It reminded him that the house did not have the musty chill he might have expected after so long a desertion. Then he noticed the post on the table by the window. Two months’ worth of letters and circulars that should have been littering the hall had been neatly stored there, awaiting David’s return. But stored there by whom? A friend? A neighbour? Where were they? How often did they call in?
Harry hurried on. He glanced into the kitchen, which revealed only a bachelor sparseness of kettle, cupboards and cooker, then climbed the stairs. There were two bedrooms and a bathroom, the rear bedroom serving as a study. More books and magazines were piled there, with a less orderly appearance than in the lounge. Colour copies of computer-generated imagery vivid seahorse swirls spiralling in dazzling patterns were Blu-Tacked around the walls. A computer, telephone, fax machine and sundry other electronic gadgetry filled a large table at one end of the room. A more modestly proportioned desk stood by the window, which looked out over the small backyard and a patch of straggling woodland beyond the rear wall that dropped away towards the creek.
Harry sat down at the desk. The top was bare save for an angle poise lamp and a Charles-and-Di wedding mug filled with pens and pencils. It looked as if it had been cleared in preparation for a lengthy absence. He slid his fingers across the wood. There was no trace of dust. Then he opened the deep drawer beneath the desk. It was fitted with a filing cradle, occupied by bulging manilla folders, subject headings recorded in felt pen on their facing edges. The first few were innocuous enough. Tax. House. Mortgage. Car. Insurance. The thickest of the lot was Divorce. With a respectful squeamishness, Harry resisted the temptation to delve into it. Globescope he pulled out and examined. It turned out to contain an unremarkable clutch of formal letters about David’s conditions of employment, most of them signed by Luke Brownlow. But the last item in the file a curt three-liner dispensing with David’s services as of 12 April was signed in Lazenby’s sprawling hand. The next file, HYDRA, Harry leafed through eagerly. But it comprised only letters written to multifarious individuals and organizations over a period of five years or more seeking funding for HYDRA’s establishment. The replies were uniformly discouraging.
The last few cradles were empty. Unused, presumably, although a split in the cardboard at the base of one was faintly inconsistent with that conclusion. Harry sat where he was for several minutes, wondering why there was so little in the way of working material. Where were the disks for the computer? Where were the voluminous jottings he imagined a mathematical theorist would naturally surround himself with? There had been the notebooks, of course. But were they really all there was?
He rose, walked across to the piles of books and magazines and bent over to examine their titles. Most of them were as impenetrably technical as he assumed the contents to be. Particle physics and quantum theory; super strings and twist or space;
topology and co homology the whole mind-bending tangle of higher mathematics Harry instinctively shrank from. Plus a couple of medical texts about diabetes, some science fiction paperbacks, several of them by Isaac Asimov, and a few fat runs of Scientific American and suchlike journals. It was what he might have expected. But it was not what he was looking for. Maybe there was simply nothing to find. Maybe the notebooks were the beginning and end of it.
He walked into the bedroom. A sheet had been laid right across the bed. The outline of pillows and folded blankets could be
seen beneath it: further proof that David had not intended to return for quite a while. There was a wardrobe and bedside cabinet, but no other furniture. A large water colour of what Harry thought could be the Californian coast dominated the wall facing the window. He glanced out into the street, satisfying himself that the alarm really had roused nobody. The man he had seen earlier walking his dog was hanging his jacket in the back of his BMW, prior to departure. The mailman was doing his rounds. Nothing else was stirring.
Harry opened the cabinet drawer. It contained a box of tissues, a pocket-watch that had stopped at 11.42 one day, a slim paperback of a script for a Tom Stoppard play Harry thought he might have heard of … and a spiral-bound notebook with a stub of pencil beside it. He took it out to leaf through. But every page was blank. If David had kept it there to record nocturnal flashes of mathematical inspiration, he was evidently more of a lark than an owl.
Then Harry noticed a tell-tale scrap of paper caught in the wire spiral all that was left of an earlier page. One that had been torn out, perhaps one of several. According to the specification printed on the cover of the notebook, it contained seventy sheets. Quickly, he counted them. Sixty-four. Six sheets were missing. It meant nothing, of course. David might have removed them himself. And yet…
Harry walked over to the wardrobe and opened it. That was all it was: a wardrobe filled with clothes. Suits; jackets; trousers; jeans; shirts; sweaters; ties. But they somehow conveyed more to Harry of the strangeness of his relationship with David than anything else he had seen. The owner of the clothes was only what he had always been to Harry: an absence; a costume without a wearer; an amputated life.
Glancing down at the boots and shoes stowed in the base of the wardrobe, Harry noticed a hatbox propped on its side at the back.
Almost certainly, then, a hat was not what it contained. He lifted it out onto the floor, unfastened the string and removed the lid.
A chaos of paper met his gaze. Old bank statements and pay-slips were interleaved with maps, travel brochures, newspaper cuttings and photograph wallets. The wallets turned out to contain only negatives. The snapshots themselves were long gone. Harry held one strip up to the light and made out the unmistakable figure of Hope Brancaster reclining curvaceously on a beach in a dramatically minimal swimsuit. A print, better still an enlargement, would have been well worth seeing. He discarded it and began sifting through the rest.
Out of the Sun Page 23
