Maestro: 4 (The Herbie Kruger Novels)

by John Gardner

  “Well she’s in the field now, Herb. She’s here.”

  Kruger shook his head, “I don’t believe the idiots we got these days. Liaison with the resident spook at Grosvenor Square one minute, then here, where they must have a dossier on her. Is crazy, Nald.”

  “She came with a particular message. The Office thinking was the same as the FBI Counter-intelligence boys. That you would come hustling to me.”

  “Then they were thinking dead right, huh? Where else would I go? You tell her?”

  Naldo shrugged. “She more or less told me. Says she needs a word.” He paused. Then—“Dinosaurs, Herb. We’re bloody dinosaurs. You know two-thirds of the American population really believes it’s all over … forever and a day.”

  “Say a day without the ever,” Herbie quoted, then thought for a moment. “At home as well. Most of the opposition party talk about disbanding the Office. Different tune if they were in power, no doubt. Sure, the Wall comes down. Peace breaks out. A hard-line coup. Mikhail Sergeyevich on the ropes. Big Boris to the rescue. End of communism. Suddenly we’re chums with Moscow. They really believe it’s over. Is like the Pope saying, ‘Catholic Church is ended. Finished. Go home and pray no more.’ You believe it? A magic wand is waved and all disappear like magic trick. It should be so easy. So what does this Pucky person want to say?”

  “She tells me that, if the Office decrees it, they’ll get you, and that rather nasty old genius, out back to England, home and beauty.”

  “You believe her, this Pucky?”

  “She’s persuasive and, I suspect, frightened.”

  “You tell her anything?”

  “Not a word.”

  “But she knows, ja?”

  “Possibly.”

  Kruger’s brow wrinkled again. “Look Nald, I’m sorry to be mixing you up in this. But is important. How they laid it out to me in London, is important. Not Passau’s old Nazi friends, but things more recent. Things of the present and future. I seize the moment, is correct, seize the moment?”

  “You bloody know it is, Herb. Stop playing games. It’s me, Naldo who helped you cut your teeth.”

  “Sure, Naldo. Okay. So events put Passau in my hands: is really just what London wanted in first place. In an odd way he trusts me, but he has to do his own thing. Unload himself to me. Might take months. Could be only a week or so. The guy’s ninety and he gets tired, but he enjoys talking with me and I’m all the Office’s got over here. I talk with this Pucky girl and she has the dogs on me fast, I think. Then we’d lose any chance of getting to the real heart of the matter. The Office wants names; they want who’s really with Mikhail Sergeyevich and Big Boris Nikolayevich. The battle order for peace in the new republic—there’s still a battle order, Nald, in spite of it all.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me in the least, even though today’s paper says KGB is being dismantled.”

  “Sure, they’ll change its name. Look, Nald, this old man knows a lot. Sure, maybe the mob tries to knock him off, but I think also that there are people in Moscow—or Kiev, or Petersburg, who also wish he was missing.”

  “What d’you want me to do, then, Herb?”

  “Is she settled in—the Pucky person?”

  “At the best hotel in town. Boar’s Head Inn.”

  “No, I mean is she a stayer?”

  “I think she’s been told to find you before the natives get your scent, yes. Art says to trust her.”

  “Keep her on the dangle for a few days. See if the G-men are moving in; try to find out what her real instructions are.” Herbie gave a little smile which deepened the wrinkles in his leathery face. “See, I don’t believe, necessarily, that a girl from London who’s worked the Grosvenor Square beat is here automatically to take us back to London. Maybe the Office wants to give her an hour of glory with Langley. I don’t know how that works anymore, Naldo.”

  “I’ll hold her off as long as I can. If you need to talk with her, she’s at the Boar’s Head under the name Cummings. Pauline Cummings.”

  “As in Cummings and goings, ja?”

  Naldo ignored the pun. “If we don’t give any of them cause, maybe they’ll start looking elsewhere. Herb, where else could you run?”

  Kruger grinned, “Cummings and goings, ha! Think about it Nald. Only one other person this side of pond I’d go to, and he’s about as old as you. Older possibly. We all worked with him a million years ago.”

  “Not Marty Forman?”

  “Who else?”

  “Didn’t know he was still alive.”

  Back in the years immediately following World War II, they had worked close to Marty Forman, a tough street fighter who would have turned to the dark side of the law if it had not been for the Office of Strategic Services: OSS, America’s contribution to things secret during the struggle against the Nazis. Marty was one of those men who took to the arcane vale of tears like a good monk to his vocation. When the CIA grew out of the remains of the OSS, Marty was there, a natural: active, astute, intuitive and very tough.

  “Alive, well and living in Florida. We talk now and again. We write letters. …”

  “And, unless Marty’s changed a great deal, he’d hand you over without giving it a thought.”

  “No, Marty would want a piece of the action. Possibly, Naldo old sheep, we could get them to believe I’ve gone native elsewhere?”

  “Maybe, who knows? If I left town in a hurry: fast with minimum baggage. Might work. Stick around, Herb. I’ll keep the lady happy if I can. Should it become a problem, I’ll be in touch.”

  “For Chrissake watch your back, Nald. You’re not as young as you were.”

  “Are any of us?” Naldo gave him a rueful smile and let himself out of the door to the rear of the house.

  He drove back the way he had come, towards Charlottesville, and then into the area immediately adjacent to the UVa campus. He took a turn which led him into a small cul-de-sac behind several affluent houses and parked in the space he had vacated an hour before, among other cars belonging to guests at a cocktail party given by one of the faculty members. He had parked this, their second car—a little Subaru—earlier in the afternoon. It had been pure luck that the Subaru was in for a service when the Feds hit town. Since then he had come and gone in the Lincoln, Barbara waiting for him when he stashed the second car after picking it up from the dealership. They had arrived at the party together, though Naldo had made his excuses and said he would leave Barbara and be along later. If the Feds were behind them they would see the Lincoln in front of the house, as they would see Naldo and Barbara leave together. The Subaru could be moved around as secondary transport.

  Barbara was having a fine time at the party. Naldo had a few drinks, ate the obligatory chicken wings, and they left around eleven.

  The Feds had a couple of the local cops, in plainclothes, working shifts at keeping an eye on the Railtons’ house. Naldo spotted the car, parked in plain sight. Inside, the elderly cop logged their return. Out at seven P.M., back in with the lights on at eleven thirty. He thanked whoever was the patron saint of surveillance operations that a trained team was being brought in from Washington the next morning. Singer, rightly, felt there should now be a tight watch on Donald Railton and his wife. It would begin before dawn. From then on, the couple would have the dogs on them twenty-four hours a day.

  DAWN, AND BIG HERBIE Kruger’s eyes snapped open. He was sweating and had been dreaming the old dream about Berlin before the thaw; a girl called Ursula, ruby glasses with fluted stems, and a Dürer pen-and-ink of an Avenging Angel. He recognized the old favorite, the ghost from his past. At the same time, he thought this was the third day of interrogation and he had better get a move on: push Passau.

  As he shaved, he knew that the old man would not be pushed. Just as Maestro Passau had proceeded through life at his own pace, so he would manipulate any interrogator. Herb would have to march to the beat of Passau’s drum and hope that the nuggets, when and if they came, would lead to a rich vein. He was doing wha
t all the good interrogators did.

  To save time, he worked in the kitchen, preparing meals that could go in the freezer and then be cooked in the microwave—lasagna; his own version of the English North Country Lancashire Hotpot, which he left simmering for lunch; and his own sensational stuffed onions, ready, with the lasagna, for the freezer. In the midst of the cooking he took Louis Passau his breakfast, appearing in the bedroom and singing his own, highly original version of “Nessun dorma” slightly off-key, so that Passau shouted at him, “Puccini’s raising a dust storm in his grave, buffoon!” Then, almost playfully, he hurled a pillow at Kruger’s retreating bulk.

  By nine thirty they were at it again, sitting opposite each other, with Kruger ready to hear what happened once the boy Passau began his lessons with Aaron Hamovitch.

  IF YOUNG LOUIS Packensteiner expected the first lesson with Hamovitch to start with practical work on the piano, he was sadly mistaken.

  “You know from nothing,” Hamovitch began, shaking his shock of gray-white hair, then running a hand through it, like a pitchfork through hay. “Of music, you know from nothing at all. So, we must probe, Louis. We must tinker and delve until we discover the seat of talent. When we find it, we unleash it. So, to work.”

  Hamovitch moved across the cluttered room, twisting and turning like a dancer to avoid the chairs and the little tables with their photograph frames, until he reached a bookcase. From this he took down his own, beautifully bound copy of the Torah, opening it at the Book of Genesis.

  “First, Louis, you read.” The heavy book was passed to the boy.

  “I’ve just come from the Talmud Torah. I thought I was here to learn about music.”

  “So you shall. Read, and you might just learn something about music. Read from here.” A finger like a leather prong darted out to the page. “Read, Louis. The first lesson of music is discipline. The Maestro you must obey always. For you, now, I am the Maestro, so read.”

  Thus the lesson began, with Louis reading aloud, about God creating heaven and earth; the darkness; the light; the division of water and dry land; the growth of grass and herb; seed and fruit.

  Hamovitch stopped him before they reached the part about the creation of fowls, creatures and fish. Leaning forward, the large teacher began to question—

  “Now, Louis, while God was creating this wonderful universe, placing the earth on its axis, the sun and moon to rule by day and night, dividing the waters—while He was doing all this, would there be a great many eruptions, yes?”

  Louis agreed. There must certainly have been such things.

  Hamovitch nodded his great head. “There would be volcanoes, I should think, and earthquakes, rending the rock and earth asunder, the sudden rushing of mighty waters. Tell me, now, Louis, was there sound to these great shakings of the earth?”

  In the here and now, Passau looked at Kruger, nodded and said, “Herb, I recall that first lesson as though it took place yesterday. I know what was going on in my head. In my head there was this picture of great ferment: of the gush and geyser of hot lava from volcanoes; the bubble of boiling mud; the terrifying crash and crumble of earthquakes, making way for the huge mass of waters. To place the earth on its axis, I thought, would be to disturb many things. Hamovitch was so clever, he reached into the mind and drew out pictures. I answered in the only possible way.”

  “Of course,” young Louis replied. “Of course. There would be a great deal of noise.”

  “Really?” Aaron Hamovitch raised his bushy eyebrows.

  “It’s obvious.”

  “Wrong. The first mistake!” In spite of the cutting edge to his voice, the older man was smiling. “This is your first lesson. There are no sounds, and no noise, unless there is someone to hear the sounds. God is spirit, and so would not necessarily hear the noises. If He did not hear, there was nobody else, nothing else. Waves of sound, yes, but nobody to receive it. A madness in silence. You see, Louis, to make music you must have two things: the sound, and someone to hear the sound. Someone to be moved by it, to weep at it, or laugh, dance, or feel his imprisoned soul soar to the heights; or be comforted, frightened, delighted, even, possibly, revolted by it.”

  “Herbie, my friend, this was the most incredible man. There were times when I thought Aaron Hamovitch was possessed by some kind of devil. He was intense, yet wholly dedicated. Music was his life, for the sheer joy of it. Not like me, where music became a means to an end. You follow me?”

  Herbie Kruger, keeping his identity as an interrogator, inclined his head and raised one large hand, a slight movement, as though indicating that Passau should continue.

  In that moment, years before in the room above Hester Street, Hamovitch looked surprised, as though the thought he had revealed had only just occurred to him. “Louis,” he continued, “All sound is a kind of music. The newsboy shouting, ‘Extray! Extray!’, the dogs barking, people screaming at each other, fighting, the automobiles in the street, or the horses. Even the rattle of the El. Even this”—he brought his hand down onto the table with a sudden loud thump which made Louis flinch. “That is a sound. All sounds are basic music. Sound only needs marshaling a little, then you have something any fool would recognize as music. From this moment, I want you to live listening to the music of life, because it is everywhere.”

  The teacher went on to explain what he meant by marshaling sounds to make them into recognizable music. He taught the boy the three elements of the organization—rhythm, melody and harmony. “Engrave those words on your heart,” he told him.

  “But he was good, and clever, Herbie.” Passau’s face lit up in a smile. “He taught me the rules of music, but he also taught that the essential thing to remember in music is that you could break the rules.”

  From this simple start, Louis began to learn. In the weeks and months ahead, the lad was to spend increasingly more time with Hamovitch, who had been right about one thing. Louis Packensteiner was a natural musician, who learned almost intuitively. “This boy,” Hamovitch said to himself—“I know this, Herbie, because he told me so later”—“is the true gold from which great musicians are made.”

  A few months after their first meeting, Aaron decided that Louis should be exposed to the full richness of music: the orchestra. A treat was devised and Hamovitch obtained two tickets for a very special symphony concert.

  At that time, the great, and equally temperamental, Arturo Toscanini was in charge of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, emerging only occasionally to conduct concerts. This was one of his rare appearances in the concert hall and Louis was quite unprepared for the shattering impact of hearing a full symphony orchestra.

  The boy sat, overwhelmed and bewitched by the surge and texture of the desks of violins, violas and cellos, the woodwind, the brass and timpani, all of them working in unison, producing a combination of great sound—wonderful, organized music.

  This was his baptism of fire, his introduction to symphonic music on a large scale, relatively late in his young life, at almost twelve years of age.

  The featured work that night was the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, and when the soloists and choir came in with the vast setting of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” in the final movement, the boy wet himself: obvious, in his concentration, amazement and awe.

  “I tell you, Herbie, I had difficulty in sleeping, that night. I had made the first decision of my life. During the concert I did not take my eyes off Maestro Toscanini. His power over the music was to me awesome. This man, in front of the orchestra, had complete control, and this was now my first and foremost goal. I told nobody, but it was that night I knew I would one day become as great a conductor as Toscanini and, by Christ, I did it.

  “We worked, my God how we worked. In those years, even when I began to help my father and learn his trade, I sucked up music like a sponge. For the next years, I hardly thought of anything but music, though great changes were taking place around me, and in the world outside. The first of those changes, Herbie, was to bring a clash betwe
en what was honest toil, to my father and mother, and what was the real value in life as far as I was concerned.

  “The business of learning my father’s trade came upon me suddenly, almost without warning. It was very dramatic. One day I was a boy going to school, and spending most of my spare time studying with Aaron Hamovitch. The next, I was learning my father’s trade. To me it came in the wink of an eye. A truly unnatural wink. It happened like this. …”

  (12)

  THEY DID NOT EVEN STOP for a morning break. Herbie had found Passau liked coffee, usually halfway through the morning session. Today, the old man seemed to have made the journey back to his boyhood so completely that very little stood between the reality of the past and the truth of the present. He continued to talk, slowly and carefully, occasionally using his hands in a gesture, or to paint invisible signs or scenes on the canvas of the air. His voice would also alter, as though he were an actor playing all the parts in the drama. Passau was engrossed in the narrative of his life, though Kruger could not tell how much of it was true and how much a fiction which had taken the place of truth down all the Maestro’s days. At the moment it did not matter greatly but the time would come when every nuance would be important. He remembered an old confessor, at Warminster, telling him, “Always remember that all autobiographies are selective.”

  “Beside what happened to me, in those first years in this country,” Passau continued, “the other events were already taking over, though I was not always truly aware of them.”

  Domestically, important things were taking place. As soon as he could read and write English with moderate accuracy, Joseph Packensteiner made application for full American citizenship. He passed the simple tests and, a little over two years after their arrival, appeared before a judge to answer the final questions.

  Packensteiner senior emerged from the courtroom as an American, and the judge, after hearing evidence, waived the sections in the so-called New Law of 1906 and allowed Joseph’s wife and son automatic citizenship with him.