There Fell a Shadow

by Andrew Klavan

  She’d probably prepared herself for the sight of me. She’d known I wouldn’t exactly look my best. I don’t think, all in all, it was the scars from the old wounds that bothered her so much as the dried blood on my face, my general dishevelment. In any case, her pale cheeks went paler still at the sight. She hurried to the coffee table to set the mug down. Then she hurried over to me.

  She came close to me. She smelled clean, like shampoo. Her hand came up to my face. She hesitated, as if I might knock it away. She touched me gently, her fingers on my forehead, then my mouth. I flinched. She studied me with her sad eyes.

  I reached up and took her hand. “Sorry I’m late, kid,” I said. “Hard day at the office.”

  She stood on tiptoe. Kissed me.

  “Ouch,” I said.

  “Are … are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I guess. How’d he get in?” I nodded at Paul.

  Paul had taken the coffee mug from the table. He lifted it to me now in salute.

  “Don’t blame the lady,” he said. “I was here when she arrived. I told her I was a friend of yours with the Post.”

  I shook my head at Chandler. “You know I don’t have any friends at the Post.”

  She did her best to smile. “I’ll try to remember.”

  “Do I need a gun to get a drink here?”

  “I thought the doctor told you not to drink. I’ll make you coffee.”

  With another wary glance at Paul, she returned to the kitchen.

  Standing alone in the center of the room, I lit a cigarette. Paul sipped his coffee, watching me over the top of it.

  I smiled. “Good coffee?”

  He lifted out of it with a loud “Ah!” He touched his tongue to the roof of his mouth, considered. “No. Not really.”

  My smile widened to a grin. “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have poisoned it.”

  “Oh now,” said Paul in his deep, foreign voice. “So unfriendly.”

  “Not at all. I just want to show my appreciation for your giving me a lift into Central Park, that’s all. That Szechuan murder-fellow chased me way the hell over to Fifth Avenue. With a goddamned gun.”

  Paul tilted toward his mug again. “How unpleasant for you.”

  “Yeah. And I was spotted with you, too. I got picked up and given the third degree.”

  That got him. His lips had just touched the white mist floating atop the black surface of the coffee. He recoiled suddenly, as if scalded. “By the police?”

  “They don’t hand out third degrees in college, man.”

  “Did you … tell them anything?”

  I took a long drag of smoke, let him sweat. “Nah,” I said, the smoke rolling out of me. “I told them you were a source. They’ve got your plates, though.”

  “That is no longer a problem. I have gotten rid of the car.” One eyebrow raised, he cast me a shrewd glance out of those sunken eyes. “I take it you have come to the conclusion that I did not kill Timothy Colt,” he said.

  “Have I?”

  “When I pointed my revolver at you just now, you did not seem quite as … what?—nervous?—as you did in the park.”

  “Why should I? You’re the only person in town who hasn’t tried to kill me this evening.”

  He lowered his face to his coffee. “The night is young,” he said.

  The scotch bottle and glass were on my desk. I went to them, poured myself a shot. I turned the desk chair around. I straddled it, the drink and cigarette dangling over the back.

  “You’re dropping ashes on the floor,” said Chandler. She had come in, carrying another mug for me. She set it on the desk.

  “Thanks,” I said. I sipped my scotch.

  “I thought the doctor told you not to smoke, too,” she said softly.

  “The doctor talks too much.”

  Chandler didn’t answer. The butts have always been a sore point between us.

  There was a hard wooden chair at the end of my desk. She moved to it, sat. She was wearing a long pleated green skirt and a white turtleneck sweater that showed off her figure. Paul eyed her as she arranged herself. She noticed it and flushed. She folded her hands in her lap, the fingers moving nervously. She sat silent, serious, prim, and erect. She listened, moving her eyes from one of us to the other.

  “So,” I said to Paul. “Aside from the. chance to point your gun at me again, what brings you to these parts?”

  He smiled charmingly. “In fact, Mr. Wells, as you have decided I am not a killer, I have decided you are not a traitor.”

  “Do tell.”

  “When I left the park unmolested by the police, I knew I had made a mistake in thinking you had alerted them to our meeting.”

  “So you retraced your steps and rescued me from the murder-man.”

  “So I wished you well in my heart,” said Paul, “and came here to tell you my story in the event you returned alive.”

  “What a guy.”

  He smiled again, his scarred face wrinkling. No matter how he smiled, though, the haunted look in his deep eyes never left. He said, “My apologies, Mr. Wells. I am wanted in too many places to act carelessly, even in the aid of others. In one or two countries, I have even been sentenced to death in absentia, a fact which could make deportation very unpleasant.”

  “Okay. I forgive you. I’ll name my children after you. But as you can see, I’ve made plans …”

  “And may I say that it is really too bad of you to leave such a charming young lady waiting.” He nodded at Chandler. She gave him nothing, an empty stare.

  “Sure, you can say that,” I said. “Or you can say what you have to say. Whatever you say, say it fast and get out.”

  He took a long swig of his coffee and, with a flourish, plunked the mug down on the table. He reached into his jacket. I tensed in my chair. He pulled out an elegant black cigarette case. He removed an unfiltered job and lit it with a silver lighter. The smoke drifted toward me. It smelled like perfume.

  “A fair request,” said Lester Paul. “I have detained you long enough.” For another moment, he smoked and gathered his thoughts. Then, at last, he began: “I wanted to tell you about the source of the conflict between me and Timothy Colt. What accounted for the scene you witnessed in the Press Club. I cannot tell my story to the police—as I say, I am wanted already and prison would not agree with me at all. I had hoped that if you wrote about it …” He shrugged, his cigarette smoke tracing a spiral in the air. “Well, let’s just say I am planning to leave your lovely country soon; when I do, I would like very much to be free of any suspicion of murder.” The hand holding the cigarette kept moving. The tendrils of smoke unraveled along with his story. “There was, as you might suspect, a woman in the case. A woman named Eleanora.”

  Without thinking, I glanced at Chandler. She, of course, had not reacted to the name. I said quickly: “Yeah, the missionary. The underground worker. I’ve heard of her.”

  “You could not have heard everything,” said Lester Paul. “You could not have heard everything she was. She was the most beautiful and courageous lady it has ever been my honor to meet. She had the face of an angel and the soul of one. She was …”

  “You did meet her, then.” I tried to keep the eagerness out of my voice. “You met her in person.”

  He inclined his head once gravely. “I did.”

  We both fell silent. There were plenty of things I wanted to ask him. I wanted to hear again about how she looked. About her golden hair, her high, proud cheeks, her graceful neck. More than that, I wanted him to describe how she moved, how she spoke, how she smelled. Had he touched her? That white skin that Colt had said looked like marble—did it feel like marble, too? Cold and smooth. Or did it soften at the touch and give off the heat of her? I wanted to ask a lot of things.

  I glanced back at Chandler. She remained as she was: quiet, stiff, watchful. She was looking at me, waiting for me to speak.

  “Go ahead,” was all I said to Paul.

  “Earlier this evening, we dis
cussed Sentu and the murder-men. Do you know the country’s history?”

  “I know there was a revolution there. And the rebels won.”

  “Yes. It was during their final advance on the capital city of Mangrela that I first made the acquaintance of Timothy Colt. He had contacted me through a journalist of our mutual acquaintance. An Englishman by the name of Robert Collins. I liked Collins a good deal. He was … jolly. He knew how to wink at what was none of his business, how to do a favor for a friend. And at the same time, he was very dedicated to his profession. A serious journalist. And a brave one, as you will hear. When Collins came to me and asked me to talk to Colt, I was happy to oblige. We met in the bar of the Hotel Victoria, late at night. The rebel shells were falling closer and closer to the city limits, and already an exodus of civilians had begun. Collins introduced me to Colt and we sat together at a table. Colt was always, as you know, a charming and persuasive man. But just then, there was a fire burning in him just beneath the surface. I diagnosed it immediately as a fire of desperation. He spoke calmly enough, but the sweat rolled steadily down the crags in his cheeks and as he leaned toward me across the table, his eyes seemed to grow bigger and brighter with every passing moment.”

  Paul paused just a moment to let us appreciate his description. Like every great con artist I’ve ever met, he loved to hear his own voice creating a world. He went on: “I had heard of Eleanora, of course. She was legendary. So much so that I was somewhat surprised to learn she was real. But Colt assured me she was real indeed, and he said she needed my help. With the city near collapse, those who knew where to find her had come to her and begged her to take their children, to insure their escape even if the parents were killed. Eleanora declined. Her network was collapsing. Everywhere, her people were being captured and killed. Not only by the government, which looked upon her as an arm of the rebellion, but by the rebels, too, in those cities which had already fallen. The rebels, indeed, were the fiercer enemy. Eleanora had given refuge to their intended victims, too. And in the panic of the nation’s fall, those who hoped to buy their lives by betraying a friend’s had done irreparable damage to her. Those underground workers who were not dead were making their escapes as best they could. Eleanora could do nothing for the children of the refugees who came to her. But some would not take no for an answer. They left their children on her doorstep, as it were, and snuck away into the night.”

  “Now, Colt had fallen in love with Eleanora. And indeed, she appeared to return that love, although perhaps she was only using him for the help he could offer her noble cause, sacrificing her own flesh, so to speak …”

  His voice trailed off. He stared into the smoke that swirled around him. I straightened a little in my chair. “Why do you say that?” I said. I could not hide the tone of eagerness now. “What proof have you got?”

  “Hm?” Paul smiled at my hopeful expression. “Proof? None at all. None at all, really. Perhaps it is just difficult for me to believe that a woman like Eleanora could commit herself to any man. Any other man.” He cocked his head. He gave me a long, speculative glance. “You know,” he said, “I do believe you understand me, Mr. Wells.”

  I snorted at him. I looked at the floor. “Keep going,” I told him.

  Paul chuckled nastily. “Yes. Yes, well, at any rate, Colt was desperate to get Eleanora out of the country before the rebels descended. But the great lady herself—she would not leave until she had found a way to get the children out of the city to safety. That was where I came in. I am, as you know, a … trader of sorts. Colt hoped I would be able to secure a boat of some kind to transport the children up the coast, possibly as far as Morocco, and so out of harm’s way. I agreed.”

  Chandler coughed. I had lit another cigarette by now. So had Paul. The whole room seemed to have sunk beneath the haze of smoke.

  “Sorry,” I said. I got up and opened the window behind my desk. The air rushed in with the rushing sounds of the night traffic. I poured myself another slug, replanted myself in the chair. “Why?” I said. “Why’d you agree to do it? Colt couldn’t have paid you much.”

  Paul made a grand gesture with one hand. He was really enjoying himself now. “In the country of the blind, Mr. Wells,” he said, “the one-eyed man is king. Exactly so, in a nation of corruption, not the official, not the soldier, not the populace, but the trader, the man who will deal in anything for a price, has the reins of power in his hand. If on occasion I chose to use that power for my own aesthetic reasons and without thought of gain … well, it was no one’s business but mine.”

  I remembered how he had rescued Holloway from Imperial House. I nodded.

  Paul continued: “I won’t bore you with the details of how I managed to secure a small trawler in the midst of all that chaos. Suffice it to say that I did. I paid the captain to lie under anchor in the gulf on which the city sat. At a prearranged hour, he was to send a lifeboat into shore to meet with us. The children would be rowed out to the trawler and then taken out to the Atlantic and up the coast. Would you mind?”

  He held out his mug to me. I grabbed my scotch bottle by the neck, dashed some of the liquor into the mug.

  “Thank you,” he said. He took a sip. He nodded, satisfied. “I met with Colt and Collins at a prearranged hour. They took me to a small, unprepossessing house in the suburbs of the city. There, I found Eleanora.…” He took another shot, shivered as it went through him. “She was surrounded by children when I saw her first. The house was full of them. Maybe thirty of them, one-year-olds, near-adolescents. All of them looking up at her. All of them trusting her to see them to safety. Well …”

  He waved away the image. I didn’t ask him to go on. I clenched my jaw so I wouldn’t ask him.

  “I suppose,” he said, “I was most impressed with her calm, brisk, businesslike manner. It was heroic, but there was not a touch of charade about it. It was very unaffected and real. Very British, too. She described to us the route we would travel—a route designed to help us avoid both the soldiers and the panicked populace. And a route, clearly, which she had made use of many times before. She insisted on coming with us, on leading the way. Nothing either Colt or I could say would dissuade her. As midnight came, we set out into the darkness. The muffled thud of the rebel shells was close enough now to make the ground beneath our feet tremble. The flare of the explosions lit the night sky red. All around us in the blackness was the sound of weeping as refugees prepared to begin the trek out of the city. Eleanora led us creeping along alleyways, through windows into cellars with holes smashed in their walls, through these holes into the next cellar and the next, out finally onto some byway until we reached a fire escape, up the escape to run, bent over, across the city’s rooftops.”

  I could picture them: a string of children punctuated by the adults who shepherded them, all of them silhouetted against the purple sky.

  “More than once, we had to plaster ourselves against a wall as the soldiers rushed past, as they fired into the panicked crowds in their own panic. More than once, the cry of a toddler or the complaint of a child threatened to betray us. But in the end, we reached the gulf shore unmolested. The boat was there as planned, and the children were loaded aboard and taken out to the trawler. It took three trips to get them all. When the last child was gone, the boat came back one more time. For Colt and Eleanora.”

  He paused. For dramatic effect, I guess. But I already knew what was coming. “She wouldn’t go,” I said.

  “She was shocked at the thought. There was still business to be done, she said. Documents, codes, other evidence that had to be destroyed. The lives of those who had risked everything to help her hung in the balance. She would not compromise their safety for her own. She sent the boat back empty.”

  Despite the open window, the perfumed smell of Paul’s cigarettes was now thick in the room. He lit another one. He waved it around.

  “That was how she lived,” he said.

  I nodded. I said nothing.

  “Now,” said Pa
ul, “I will tell you how she died.”

  “This, I suppose, is the part of the story that concerns you most. That will explain my meeting with Colt in the Press Club the night before he was murdered.”

  Paul now knocked the rest of his scotch back as if to brace himself. I did the same. Chandler, hands folded in her lap, just looked on.

  “Colt, of course, begged her to go,” Paul said. “But she—she bowed her head quietly under the onslaught of his argument and would not budge from her position. In her simple, straightforward fashion, she explained that the final responsibility for this network belonged to her. She surely wanted to escape, but she would not leave disaster in her wake. If it had been another woman, I do believe Colt would have physically forced her into the boat. But that was not the sort of thing one did to Eleanora.

  “Instead, we returned to the safe house by the same circuitous way we’d come. We made coffee and toasted the success of our mission. When we’d done, Eleanora went to a rolltop desk in the living room and opened it. When Robert Collins saw what was inside, he let out a long whistle of delight. He was looking at a ham radio.”

  I shook my head. “So?”

  “Well, by then, you see, the city was entirely cut off from the outside.”

  “Yeah, Holloway told me about that.”

  “Collins—who, as I say, was a serious and ambitious reporter—realized he was looking at what possibly was the last means of filing dispatches out of the city. That realization cost him his life.”

  The smoke—all the smoke—drifted between us now. It was a single gray-yellow mass. I saw Paul floating in it where he sat as if from a distance. He seemed insubstantial, like a figure in a dream. Like the smoke, his voice drifted on.

  “At any rate, Eleanora used the radio to contact one of her safe houses in Jacobo, a city nearby, a major center of her operations. She was told that the situation there was dire. Desperate refugees were gathering in the hopes she would appear, and no one else was left who could help them. She believed that if she could get through the rebel lines to Jacobo, she could give what aid there was to give and possibly arrange her own escape as well. Colt declared it was too dangerous. He demanded she let him get her out in the American airlift. But Eleanora was adamant. It was left finally to me to propose a more sensible …” Paul stopped. We exchanged a glance through the perfumed smoke. He smiled. “But there is no point in trying to deceive you, Wells, is there? The prospect of aiding Eleanora’s escape, of acting as her hero, earning her gratitude and admiration—such a prospect was as appealing to me as it was to Colt. I suggested that, with my contacts on both sides of the affair, I could guide her safely and easily to Jacobo provided she had a passport under a false name. To my surprise, Eleanora had taken no precautions to secure her own escape from the country. She had no valid passport at all, and the conditions in the city being what they were, it would be difficult to procure one.