by Morris West
“That’s a very risky game, Father.”
“I know, but for the moment we can play it. We’re cash rich. If the game gets too tough, we’ll think again.”
“I wish you luck.”
“We need some good intelligence, too. There’s another aspect to this, Carl. It calls in question not only Larry’s loyalties but the attitudes of all our regional offices: France, London, Singapore, even as far as Sydney. Your reports on Vianney take on a new color in this light.”
“I know. I know, too, that we musn’t rush judgment. Your own words: ‘Hasty judgment means a long repentance.’ At least you have me here on this side of the Atlantic. Is Madi home tonight?”
“I believe so. It’s the nanny’s night off.”
“I’ll talk to her and then I’ll call Dr. Levy. We need her advice very badly now.”
“Recruit the devil if you can use him,” said my father grimly.
When I put down the phone, I was startled to see Ellie, wrapped in her dressing gown, leaning against the jamb of the bathroom door.
“That was a quick bath.”
“I haven’t had it yet. The tub’s full and hot. I’m waiting to scrub your back as you asked.”
“Meantime, you’ve been eavesdropping on a private conversation.”
“No. I’ve been asking myself how much should be private between two people who share each other’s bodies and make love talk together and even create images to be passed on to the children they may have. Primitive people say that’s a magical act, don’t they? You make the image, you possess the person’s soul. Well, right now, Edgar Benson, you possess my soul and I’m damned and double-damned if I know what to do about it!”
She stood there, propped against the doorframe, her face crumpled, weeping quietly like a child who had experienced her first random cruelty. I went to her and took her in my arms. She did not struggle. She did not respond, but simply leaned into me for support while I groped for words of comfort or explanation. They were hard to come by. Ellie’s own plaintive plea filled the silence.
“I know you told me that you might be called away. You didn’t lie—at least I don’t think you did; so I can’t be angry with you. I’m just surprised that I feel so bad after so short a time.”
“I feel badly, too. Something has happened which I didn’t expect. I’ll try to explain a little of what it’s about, but I can’t tell all of it. That’s hard for you, and it’s hard for me too. I have a secret which isn’t mine to share and a responsibility I can’t delegate either. All the other things we shared yesterday and today are real…Nobody can take them away from us.”
“But they’ll wear away, won’t they? The finest gold is soft and wears away even when you wear it between your breasts. I don’t blame you. I wish it could be different, that’s all. Now I’ll go and take my tub while you finish your calls.” She gave me a small uncertain smile. “Then, if you’re not too long, I’ll either scrub your back or strangle you!”
She slipped from my arms and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. A moment later I heard the whirring of the pumps and the bubble of the water. I turned back to the phone to call Madi and Alma Levy.
Madi was shocked at the news that Larry had been hospitalized. Her immediate conclusion was that he had gone off the drug dosages prescribed by Dr. Levy and thereby precipitated a major episode which had required hospitalization. There was a fundamental objection to that idea: the continued presence of Dr. Langer. A more likely scenario was that Larry had traveled with the doctor, who had deliberately treated him with psychotropic drugs to procure his collapse and a prearranged committal in Switzerland.
I told Madi I would be back to her as soon as I had finished my discussions with Sergio Carlino. Meantime, she should be ready to leave for Switzerland at short notice, bringing with her Larry’s original passport and their marriage certificate and any other relevant documents. I encouraged her to believe that it would not be too difficult to secure Larry’s release from he hospital. I did not tell her that I was less sure about getting him to rescind any power of attorney he might have vested in Dr. Rubens.
For the rest, I told her to sit tight and trust brother Carl to sort out the mess. I did not tell her that brother Carl had a mess of his own to tidy: a sad and angry companion, waiting either to scrub him or kill him in a bubbling bathtub. My conversation with Alma Levy produced a firestorm of anger.
“This is outrageous! I have never heard of your Doctor Alois Langer; but if what you tell me is true, he has taken a criminal risk! With some of these compounds the effects are irreversible. They were used in Soviet mental institutions on political prisoners forcibly confined. Fortunately, the Burgholzli is a legitimate institution with a long history of excellence. Great names worked there, Jung, Bleuler, Ferenczi, the pioneers. One may hope that today’s staff will be observant enough and careful enough to diagnose Larry’s condition. In any case, I have changed my mind. I shall come to Europe whenever you call me. I cannot bear to think of this—this criminal tyranny against a patient of mine! Meanwhile, I’ll see if I can rake up a contact with the Burgholzli itself. It shouldn’t be too difficult. The problem is that one has to be very formal with the Swiss, very respectful of their protocols. Leave it to me. I’ll see what I can do.”
“But please, Doctor, please consult with me before you act. There is more than medicine involved here.”
“I know, Carl. Trust me.”
“One more question—which I shouldn’t ask: How’s Madi holding up?”
“She’s fine. She’s bruised and angry; but she’s liberated from her own dependence on her partner’s infirmity. How are you?”
“Put it this way: Right now I’d rather be feeding the ducks with you in Central Park.”
“That’s nice to hear. Shalom, Carl Emil. I wish peace on your house.”
I breathed a long and fervent amen to that; then I stripped hurriedly and climbed into the tub with Ellie. She made no move toward me, but watched as I let the churning water engulf me and the jets pound my tense muscles.
Finally, she asked calmly, “Any more phone calls?”
“No, that’s all.”
“So what’s next?”
“I have to check out at six in the morning.”
“Where does that leave me?”
“I’ll order a limousine to take you on to Venice so you can rejoin your friends. You don’t have to get up early. The room will be paid for. Check out when you choose.”
“And that’s the only choice?”
“No. You may stay here for a couple of days if you like. I’ll be happy to arrange it.”
“And what will I do, write letters to Juliet? Mourn my lost love at her tomb?”
“Alternately, you can get up early, ride into Milan with me and go on your way from there.”
“And that’s the end of the story for Ellie Milland?”
“Not quite. You did promise either to strangle me, or scrub my back. Strangling might be the more welcome fate at this moment.”
“When you were talking on the phone, you looked troubled. You sounded troubled.”
“I was. I am.”
“But you won’t talk about it.”
“I can’t. Too many other people’s lives are involved. Some of them are at real risk.”
“Then so you won’t be any more troubled, I’ll tell you now. I accept your offer of a limousine to Venice in the morning. So while I’m scrubbing your back and you don’t have to look at me, talk to me about you, talk about you and me. Tell me nice things that will be pleasant to remember and make me feel a little more confident than I do at this moment. Will you try to do that, Mr. Benson?”
“I’ll try, Ms. Milland. God knows you deserve it.”
I slewed myself around in the tub, so that I sat between her legs, and she began soaping and scrubbing me while the tension between us drained away slowly into a kind of confession.
“You guessed right. I’m not the crazy fellow you met at Pa
ntalone. I am, most of me anyway, the fellow you were with last night and all today. Tonight is still open, but that’s entirely up to you, Ellie Milland, and you’ll hear no sour words from me if you refuse.
“The name I travel under isn’t my real name. The signature on your drawing isn’t the real signature. One day, when this is all over, I’ll send you an authentic signed piece. The problem is, I can’t tell you why. All I can say is that I’m not a criminal. I’m not running away from anyone. Before I came here, I asked a woman to marry me. We’ve been close friends for a long time, though we’ve never lived together under the same roof because she’s very independent and I’m a selfish fellow and this has been a very satisfactory arrangement for both of us. I was the one who was feeling lonely, so I asked her to marry me. She wasn’t at all sure it was a good idea. So, I came down here, and the night before last I was still lonely and I went out cruising—in Verona of all places!—and here we are. I know you’re lonely too, and lonely people shouldn’t hurt each other, though sometimes they do.
“If you ask me where we go from here, I have to say I don’t know, because there’s a lot of unfinished business I have to deal with and I won’t be thinking straight until it’s done. I can’t even give you my card and say call me, because the one I carry is a stage prop. If you give me yours, I’ll promise to call when all this is over, but only if you’ll promise not to sit around waiting and wondering and feeling diminished by yet another son of a bitch who didn’t know the treasure he’d lost. Have you finished my back yet, Ms. Milland?”
“Just this very minute, Mr. Benson. Now if you’ll turn around we’ll deal with the front of you.”
And the rest? As the ancient chroniclers used to say, the rest is silence. I carried her to her own bed in the very small hours of the morning and drew the covers over her, kissed her good-bye, and returned to my own bed, where I lay wakeful until the night porter called at cockcrow to tell me it was time to rise and hit the road.
9
THE HEADQUARTERS OF CORSEC Italia S.p.A. were a surprise. They lay outside the city itself on a stretch of reclaimed swampland, surrounded by a double row of chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. There were exit gates on four sides, each with its own guardhouse, and private roads led from them onto separate arteries, so that it would be difficult if not impossible to blockade the compound.
Company vehicles, armored vans, and various automobiles were housed in bunkered shelters around the central block, which was an eight-story concrete building crowned with a steel tower and a whole array of antennae. The place was a witness to money and power, a defensive alliance of giant companies against outside enemies and traitors inside their corporate walls. I guessed, though I had no evidence to support it, that this fortresslike place was financed by a consortium of Italian and European businesses, held in uneasy alliance by the patrician hand of Sergio Carlino.
I was whirled up to his office in a high-speed elevator and ushered through an anteroom, where an aloof young woman received me and conducted me into the presence of the master himself, enthroned behind a huge desk with a battery of computer screens on the right and a modern intercom board on the left. A single folder lay mathematically centered in front of him. He stood to greet me, shook my hand, waved me regally into a chair, ordered coffee, and made courteous inquiries about my sojourn in the Veneto. He offered condolences on my all too brief acquaintance with my “academic friend.” He commented on my short beginnings of a beard. He thought that it made me look younger—scruffiness being the badge of youth. Then the tongue-in-cheek talk was over. He opened the folder and plunged straight into business.
“Your brother-in-law is now in Switzerland. He is obviously sick enough to be confined in a reputable institution. You and your family can arrange access to him at any time—though what success you will have in the encounter is still a question mark. To arrange the access, you will need to reveal your true identity to the medical authorities—and possibly to the police. This means that your change of identity will have no point or purpose anymore, unless…”
He hesitated long enough to prompt my question.
“Unless what?”
“Unless you are prepared to play out the charade a little longer.”
“For what purpose?”
“The original one: to see what it might reveal about the activities of Falco and Dr. Rubens, who, at least on the face of it, are manipulating a sick man and engineering a stock-market operation against Strassberger.”
“If it will produce anything of course I’ll do it, but it could leave Larry out on a limb.”
“Not so far out,” said Carlino amiably. “He is in the care of a most reputable clinic. He is safer there than on the streets of any city.”
“So what do you propose I do?”
“What you planned from the beginning: Present yourself at Simonetta Travel, quote their own publicity back to Falco, ask them if he can arrange a disappearance for you. See what sort of response you get. I’ll send you in wired so we can pick up the talk in one of our surveillance vans. We’ll analyze it together afterward.”
“There’s no guarantee he’ll see me.”
“A phone call will prove it, one way or the other.”
“When would I do this?”
“Today, if possible. We can call the agency this minute.”
“Does Falco speak English?”
“Quite well. Can you remember enough of your briefing to pass his questionnaire?”
“I won’t know until I face it, will I?”
“No, you won’t.” Carlino was suddenly grave. “Think about this when you go in. Falco’s a practiced rogue. He’s pulled himself up to a position where—if our reasoning is correct—he is now able to bid for control of an important merchant banking enterprise. He lives, like every feral animal, on his instincts. If things go wrong, if he finds flaws in your story, don’t back off. Attack, accuse! The worst that can happen is that he will refuse you as a client or you decline to become one.”
“Do you think that will worry him?”
“It will disturb him, at least. He’s got a lot riding on this game. He will be doubly careful of his image, as you must be of yours when you confront him.”
“Let’s get on with it, then.”
He picked up the phone and gave rapid directions to his secretary. A few moments later she had Falco on the line. Carlino threw a switch so that the conversation was audible to him as well. I began in a tentative, halting style.
“I hope you speak English, Mr. Falco. My Italian isn’t very good.”
“I speak English, yes.” He was cautious and curt. “Who is this?”
“You won’t know me. My name is Edgar Benson. I’m a Canadian. I’ve been holidaying at the Due Torri in Verona. I’ve just arrived in Milan. I’d like to see you urgently about some travel arrangements.”
“Who recommended you to us, Mr. Benson?”
“No one. I found you myself.”
“How did you do that?”
“There was an article about you and your agency in a hotel magazine. It spoke about the special services you offer. You know the piece I refer to?”
“Oh, that! Yes. Like most journalistic efforts it was a little overdone, but yes, we can make special arrangements. They are, however, quite expensive.”
Now it was my turn to be curt.
“I assure you, Mr. Falco, I have excellent credit references. On my part, I should need to be assured that your performance as travel agents matches your publicity.”
That set him back on his heels, but only for a moment. His tone changed in an instant, to warm and ingratiating.
“Of course. Our very existence depends on client service. May I suggest eleven this morning, in my office?”
“Eleven would be convenient, yes.”
“You know where we are?”
“I’ll find you.”
“Would you care to give me a preliminary idea of your requirements, so we may have some material re
ady for you? We have offices in Paris, New York, and Los Angeles and worldwide affiliation in the hospitality industry.”
“Requirements? Let me give you a short list. I don’t enjoy discomfort. I don’t want undue health hazards. I need reasonable access to medical care. My tastes are for the exotic, preferably for places where there are indigenous local arts and an agreeable local support system in terms of household service. Above all, I require privacy and safe communications.”
“That’s a challenging list, but I’m sure we can find what you need. May I ask what kind of work you do?”
“It’s not work, Mr. Falco. It’s a life which I have been lucky enough to enjoy. I’m an artist, a designer, and I draw much on indigenous art and craft work. I have a very select clientele. So: eleven o’clock, then.”
“I look forward to our meeting, Mr. Benson.”
Sergio Carlino leaned back in his chair and surveyed me with lordly approval.
“Well! Now we have the other face of art. An actor indeed! A great comedian!”
He might well be pleased. He might well shower me with praise. His fine Italian hand had just moved me into play against the adversary who had so far eluded him and his former colleagues in law enforcement. He asked me what I was grinning at. I told him he was a very clever fellow. I was paying the money; he was using me as the instrument of his own vendetta against Francesco Falco.
He seemed flattered by the accusation. He gave me very good reasons for it. Actors had always been rated as rogues and vagabonds. Even the Church, not so long ago, had held them excommunicated de facto and—saving a deathbed repentance—damned to hell. Conclusion? They were usable and expendable and if they footed the bill, as I was doing, so much the better.
That seemed to have carried the joke far enough. There was never enough humor in it anyway—and a slight hint of malice. I suggested that Sergio brief me for my eleven o’clock performance opposite Francesco Falco. He thought about it for a few moments and then set down his answer.
“What I give you now is a wish list, not a prescription. In the end, you will have to improvise anyway. This is how I see the direction of the meeting. You offer yourself to Falco as a bona fide client. He will present you with a whole list of questions, not only to ascertain your tastes and needs but to give himself a profile of you. You will answer freely but always with a certain reserve. You will remind him—as you have just reminded me—that you are the man who pays the money. You want a pleasant, possibly a permanent, change of lifestyle. You also want a safe channel for your funds and protection against tax gatherers. This leads, if not immediately, then certainly before the end of the discussion, to Dr. Rubens. You lean on the financial aspects of your situation. Your references will be impeccable, but be sure Falco will check them all. Once he has done that, the hook will be in his mouth and you can begin tugging on the line.”
