Read The Talbot Odyssey Online
Authors: Nelson DeMille
The Talbot Odyssey (12 page)
She drew the sheet up over her. “Are you still a member of the University Club?”
Thorpe sat on his haunches and scratched his head as though trying to remember. “I was . . . up until about four nights ago—Monday—you were out of town, I think. . . .”
“Drunk or disorderly?”
“I’m not sure. I remember trying to brush something off my face, but it was the floor.”
She smiled and glanced at the mantel clock again. “We should get moving.” She began to rise.
Thorpe stood and walked to the bed. He put his hands on either side of her and leaned over. “What’s going on, Kate?”
She ducked under his arm and got out of bed. “None of your business.”
“Can I help?”
She knelt beside the fireplace and ignited the gas jets. Blue flames curled around a log made of volcanic rock. “There’s too much light in here. Why are the lights always so bright?”
“Better to see you, my dear.” He went to the wall and turned down a rheostat. The room grew dark except for the glow of the fireplace. He changed the music on the stereo to a Willie Nelson tape, then poured two martinis and crouched beside her in front of the fire. The flame warmed their exposed skin and highlighted Katherine’s breasts and high cheekbones. Neither spoke for some time, then Katherine said, “Do you know a Colonel Carbury?”
Thorpe turned to her. “Carbury?”
Her eyes met his. “You know him?”
“Well . . . slightly. Friend of my father’s, Englishman, right? What
is
this about, Kate?”
She finished her drink, stood, and walked to the dresser. She extracted Eleanor Wingate’s letter from her bag and came back to the fireplace. She held the letter toward him but did not give it to him. “I’ll let you read this with the understanding that you are not to discuss it with
anyone.
Not your people, and not even your father. You’ll see why if you agree.”
He held out his hand, and she passed him the letter. Thorpe unfolded the pages and began reading by the light of the fire. He sipped his martini, but his eyes never left the letter.
He looked up and passed the pages back to her. “Where is the diary?”
“To be delivered,” she said softly. “What do you think, Peter?”
Thorpe shrugged as he got to his feet. He found a pack of cigarettes on the mantel and removed one, keeping his back to her as he spoke. “It’s worth following up.”
She moved beside him and stared at his handsome features. She thought he looked more agitated than his words revealed.
He said, “Poor Kate. This must be distressing after all these years.”
“Yes . . . as a personal matter, but I’m more distressed about the other implications.”
“Are you? I suppose that’s normal. You didn’t know your father.”
She put her hand on his cheek and turned his face so she could see him. “Do you know anything about this?”
“No. But did I understand from your conversation with Abrams that Carbury is to be at the armory tonight? Is that when he’s going to give you the diary?”
“Yes. He came to my office this afternoon without an appointment. Said he’d just gotten off the plane. But I guess he’s been here since Wednesday. Anyway, we spoke, and he gave me that letter. He said he’d produce the diary tonight.”
Thorpe nodded slowly. “Strange . . . I mean that Carbury should come to New York to see my father receive an award, and to the best of my knowledge my father doesn’t know he’s in town.”
“He may know. You two don’t exactly confide in each other.”
Thorpe seemed not to hear. He sat on the sofa and lit the cigarette, drawing on it thoughtfully.
His mood had changed markedly. Katherine would have liked to think it was because of his concern for her, but that was not characteristic of Peter Thorpe.
Thorpe said, “You did well to have him followed. Good instincts.”
Katherine accepted the rare compliment without reply. She said, “Do you feel this is serious? How did the letter go—‘grave and foreboding’?”
Thorpe walked toward the dresser. “Very possibly.” He poured another martini. “I’d like to see that diary.”
She gathered her clothing from the closet, and walked toward the door. “Did my things arrive?”
Thorpe nodded absently. “Yes . . . yes. Eva laid everything out in the beige room.”
Katherine stopped at the door. “Where is she?”
“Who . . . ? Oh, Eva . . .” He shrugged. “Someplace. Out.”
Thorpe seemed to snap out of his inattentiveness. “By the way, I don’t like the blue dress. Icy.”
“Who asked you?” She walked out on the balcony that surrounded the living room and turned onto the connecting catwalk that was suspended above the room. Thorpe followed, carrying his drink. She stopped in the center of the walk and looked out a huge picture window that had been recently cut into the north wall. She held her clothes in front of her and watched the rain fall gently in the breezeless night. Thorpe stood beside her. He said, “Hell of a view. You like it?”
She replied, “It fascinates me—not the view, but the fact that you could talk your father into spending a small fortune to put a window into the twenty-third floor of a high-rise, contrary to the building code and over the objections of the management. That’s what fascinates me—the fact that you get what you want, no matter how trivial your whims and regardless of what it costs other people in time, money, or bother.”
“I like the view. Don’t make more of it than it is. I can see Harlem from here. See? I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight. Probably the same thing we did.”
“That’s crude, insensitive, and boorish.”
“Yes, it is. . . Still, I wonder. . . .” He sipped his drink.
“Sometimes you have no . . . no heart, Peter, no social conscience, no sense of propriety, no—”
“Hold on! I’m not going to be lectured to. I’m self-centered and I’m a snob. I know it. I like myself this way.”
She shrugged and headed for her room.
Thorpe called out, “Listen, I’m going to dress quickly and leave you here. I’ve got to meet someone. I’ll see you at the armory.”
She replied without turning, in a voice that was tinged with disappointment if not anger. “Don’t be late.”
“It won’t take long. You know where everything is. Let yourself out.”
She entered the guest room and closed the door behind her. There was, she reflected, nothing of hers permanently left in this huge apartment. Another woman might be suspicious of that, but this was not an apartment in the normal sense—it was a CIA safe house and domestic station, and what went on here could only be appreciated in that context.
Agents in transit sometimes slept here, as did other men and women whose status was not clear to her. On one occasion they’d debriefed a defector here, and the place had been off limits to her for over a month.
And although the decor was old-fashioned, there were high-technology refinements such as the security system and, she knew, a complete recording system. She wondered about cameras. Upstairs, on the third floor, was a great deal of electronics. She’d never seen that floor, but there were times when she could hear the humming of the machines and actually feel the vibrations.
She didn’t like it here. But this is where Peter lived when he was in New York, which was most of the time these days. And, for now, she wanted to be wherever he was.
Tony Abrams came to an old red-brick house on 36th Street in a block of elegant brownstones. To New Yorkers who had an appreciation of the value of midtown property, this block of private residences, sitting on some of the most valuable land in America, announced: Money. Set in Abrams’ section of Brooklyn, the narrow row houses might seem drab, he thought.
Unlike the brownstones, whose front doors were at the tops of high steps for privacy and to allow for servants’ quarters below, the door of this house was at sidewalk level. A gas lamp flickered on either side of the door, and to the left was a large multipaned window with scrolled wrought-iron bars. It was a house more reminiscent of old Philadelphia or Boston than old New York.
Abrams peered through a clear spot in the mist-covered window into a small sitting room. Logs were blazing in the fireplace, and two men and two women sat with drinks. The men were dressed in black tie, and he recognized them as George Van Dorn, a senior partner in O’Brien, Kimberly and Rose, and Tom Grenville, a soon-to-be partner. The women, wearing evening dresses, were probably their wives. Suburbanites, using the company digs for a night on the town. The O’Brien firm strongly believed in taxpayer-supported perquisites.
Abrams lifted a brass knocker and brought it down on the black door three times.
An attractive young woman of about twenty-five, dressed in a black jumper and a white turtleneck sweater, opened the door. “Mr. Abrams?”
“Mr. Abrams.”
She smiled. “Please come in. You look wet. My name is Claudia.”
He stepped inside the foyer. She had, he noticed, an accent. Central European, perhaps. He handed her his coat.
“Where is your hat?”
“On the bureau of my uncle.”
She seemed uncertain, then said, “Your things are upstairs. Have you been here before?”
“In my last life.”
She laughed. “The second door on the left. . . . Well, come, I will show you.” She draped his coat on a hook over a hissing radiator and led the way.
He passed the sitting room and followed her through the narrow low-ceilinged hallway. The stairs were tilted, as was the whole house, but in a nation of straight new houses, the tilt was somehow chic.
She opened a door off the small upper hallway and led him into a miniature room furnished in what might have been real Chippendale. His tuxedo sat in a box on a high four-poster bed. The box was marked
Murray’s Formal Wear, Sales and Rentals
.
The young woman said, “There is a robe on the bed. The bathroom is across the hall, and here on the dresser is all you will need for shaving and bathing. When you are dressed, you may wish to join the Van Dorns and Grenvilles for a cocktail. Is there anything else I may do for you?”
She was, Abrams saw, conversant enough with the idiom to smile at the tired old double entendre. As she pushed her long, straight auburn hair back over her shoulders, he looked at her closely. “Have I seen you at the office?”
“Perhaps. I am a client.”
“Where are you from?”
“From? Oh, I am Rumanian. I live here now. In this house.”
“As a guest?”
“I am no one’s mistress, if that’s what you mean. I’m a political refugee.”
“Me too. From Brooklyn.”
There were a few seconds of silence in which they took stock of each other. It was, Abrams thought, unmistakably lust at first sight. He took off his jacket and tie and hung them in a wardrobe cabinet. He hesitated over his shirt buttons, then looked at Claudia, who was staring at him openly. He took off his shirt and threw it on the bed. His hand went to his belt buckle. “Are you staying?”
She smiled and left the room. Abrams finished undressing and put on the robe. He took the shaving kit and went into the hall. He found the bathroom, a small room that looked as if it had once been a large closet. He shaved and showered, then returned to his room. He opened the box of clothing and began dressing, cursing the shirt studs and the tight collar. Murray had forgotten the patent leather shoes, as Abrams knew he would, and he had to wear his street shoes, which were barely passable. He looked in the full-length mirror on the door as he struggled with the bow tie. “I hope everyone else looks like this.”
Abrams went downstairs to the sitting room. Tom Grenville, a handsome man about five years younger than Abrams and about a thousand times richer, said to his wife, “Joan, Tony is studying for the bar.”
George Van Dorn answered the question the wives were thinking. “Mr. Abrams was a policeman for a long time.”
Kitty Van Dorn leaned forward in her chair. “That sounds so interesting. How did you happen to choose that career?”
Abrams looked at her. She was either much younger than her husband or she was heavily into vitamins, exercise, and plastic surgeons. He wondered about middle-aged women who still called themselves Kitty. “I always wanted to be a policeman.”
Joan Grenville, an attractive strawberry blonde with freckles, asked, “Where do you live?”
Abrams poured himself a Scotch from the sideboard. “Brooklyn.” Her voice, he noticed, was kind of breathy.
“Oh . . . so this is a convenience for you. Us too. We live in Scarsdale. That’s farther than Brooklyn.”
“From where?”
She smiled. “From here. The center of the universe. I want to move back to town, but Tom doesn’t.” She looked at her husband, but he turned away.
Abrams regarded her closely. She was wearing a simple white silk dress. He noticed she had her shoes off and that she didn’t wear toenail polish, or in fact much makeup at all. Healthy and wealthy, he thought. Slim and trim, pretty and preppie, and perhaps even intelligent. The nearly final stage in the evolution of the species.
Kitty Van Dorn added, “We live out on the Island. Glen Cove. George uses this place often. Don’t you, George?”
Van Dorn grunted and moved to the sideboard. Abrams could see that he’d had a few already. Van Dorn spoke as he poured a drink. “Kimberly—that is, Henry Kimberly, Senior—bought this place around the turn of the century. Paid three thousand dollars for it. Bought it from a Hamilton or a Stuyvesant . . . can’t remember which. Anyway, Henry Junior lived here himself for a few years after he got married. When the war started, he moved his family to Washington. Then he went overseas and got killed. Damned shame.” He raised his glass. “To Henry.” He drank.
Abrams stood by the fireplace and watched Van Dorn drain off the bourbon. Abrams said, “Henry Kimberly was an OSS officer, wasn’t he?”
“Right,” answered Van Dorn. He suppressed a belch. “Me too. What room do you have, Abrams?”
“Room? Oh, second floor, second on the left.”
“That was the nursery—Kate’s room. Henry and I used to go in there and coo coo with her. Henry loved that kid. And her sister, Ann, too.” A melancholy look passed over his ruddy face. “War is shit.”
Abrams nodded. The conversation was picking up.
Grenville said, “My father was also OSS. A whole group of the firm’s men and women were recruited by Bill Donovan. Donovan’s critics used to say OSS stood for Oh, So Social.” He smiled.
Abrams said, “Who were Donovan’s critics?”
Grenville answered, “Mostly the pinkos and J—jerks who hung around Roosevelt. Jerks.”
There was a long silence in the room, broken finally by Van Dorn, who was working on another drink. He looked over his shoulder at Abrams. “You might find this evening interesting.”
Kitty Van Dorn made a sound that suggested it wasn’t likely.
Tom Grenville stirred his drink with his finger. “You’re a friend of Kate’s, right? She called and said you’d be coming.”
“Yes.” Abrams lit a cigarette. This conversation had an unreal quality to it. Neither of these men had so much as nodded to him in the office before, yet, though both men’s attitudes were slightly condescending, they were in some undefined way tentatively friendly. It reminded him of his first interview in the basement of the Bari Pork Store when he’d been dragged in for the announced purpose of having his face broken, and had emerged a Red Devil.
Joan Grenville got out of her chair and knelt on the hearth rug, a foot from where he was standing. She took up a poker and prodded the fire, then turned her head and looked up at him. “Will you be staying here tonight, Mr. Abrams?”
“Tony.” He looked down and saw the smooth white curve of her breasts, ending in the soft pink of her nipples. “I don’t know, Mrs. Grenville. You?”
She nodded. “Yes. Please call me Joan.”
Abrams turned, avoiding Tom Grenville’s eyes, and went to the sideboard although he didn’t want another drink. “Anyone need anything?”
No one answered. George Van Dorn said, “You’re perfectly welcome to stay.”
Kitty Van Dorn added, “No one should travel on the subway to Brooklyn so late.”
“I thought,” said Abrams, “I might actually take a taxi.”
Again there was a silence. Abrams didn’t know if this was amusing or awkward, if it was democracy in action or an act of noblesse oblige. They were trying, but he was getting a bit of a headache.
George Van Dorn found his cigar butt in the ashtray and lit it. “Did Claudia get you everything you needed, Abrams?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Good.” He blew a billow of gray smoke. “She’s a client, you know. Not hired help or anything like that.”
“So she said.”
“Did she?” He settled back in his armchair. “Her grandfather was Count Lepescu—a leader of the Rumanian resistance during the German occupation. I guess that makes her a countess or something. She’s staying here for a while.”
Abrams glanced at Joan Grenville, who was sitting cross-legged contemplating the fire, her dress hiked back to her thighs. Abrams had a vision of a sorority-house weekend at Wellesley or Bennington, lots of beer, junk food, guitars, and chirpy voices. Strewn casually on the chairs was fifty thousand dollars’ worth of ski gear, and strewn casually on the floor were the skiers. There were pert little ski-slope noses and breasts to match, and dozens of pink toes with no nail polish. There was so much straw-colored hair and so many blue eyes that it looked like a cast party for
Village of the
Damned.
There would be a huge red winter sun setting below a snowy-white birch-covered hill, and the fire would crackle. He’d never seen any such thing, but neither had he ever seen his pancreas, yet he knew it was there.
“The Reds grabbed him,” said Van Dorn.
Abrams looked at him. “Who . . . ?”
“Count Lepescu, Claudia’s grandfather. Didn’t like his title. Shot him. Shipped the family to some sort of work camp. Most of them died. Nice reward for fighting the Nazis. War is shit. Did I say that?”
“George,” reprimanded Kitty Van Dorn, “please watch your language.”
“The Russians are shits too. Like to shoot people.” He finished his drink. “After Stalin croaked, what was left of the Lepescus were released. Claudia’s father wound up in a factory. Married a factory girl, and she gave birth to Claudia. The father was rear-rested and disappeared. The mother died a few years ago. We’ve been trying to get Claudia out for some time.”
“Who’s been trying?”
“Us. We finally shipped her out last autumn. Working on a citizenship now.”
“Why?”
Van Dorn looked at Abrams. “Why? We owed. We paid.”
“Who owed?”
“O’Brien, Kimberly and Rose.”
“I thought you meant your old intelligence service.”
No one spoke. Tom Grenville walked to the window. “The car’s out front. Maybe we should get moving.”
Van Dorn looked at his watch. “Where the hell is Claudia, anyway? It takes that girl forever to get dressed.”
Abrams put his drink on the mantel. “She’s coming?”
“Yes,” answered Grenville. “What table are you at?”
“I think it’s table fourteen.”
Tom Grenville’s eyebrows rose. “That’s with O’Brien and Katherine.”
“Is it?”
Van Dorn flipped a cigar ash in his glass. “That’s my table, too. The firm took eleven tables this year. We used to take twenty or thirty. . . .” He stubbed out his cigar. “One of you ladies should go hustle her highness along.”
Claudia came into the small room wearing a black silk evening dress with silver shoes and bag. “Her highness is ready. Her highness’s ladies-in-waiting are on strike. Her highness apologizes.”
Kitty Van Dorn said, “You look absolutely stunning.”
Abrams thought he would have bet a week’s paycheck that someone was going to say that.
Claudia looked at Abrams. “Will you ride with us?”
Abrams nodded. “If there’s room.”
Van Dorn said, “Plenty of room. Let’s go.”
They put on their coats and stepped into the cool wet night. A stretch Cadillac was waiting at the curb, and a chauffeur in gray livery held open the door. Abrams climbed in last and took a jump seat facing the rear.
George Van Dorn found the bar quickly and began to make himself a drink. “This stuff seems to taste better in a moving vehicle—boats, planes, cars . . .”
Kitty Van Dorn looked apprehensive. “It’s going to be a long evening, George.”
Joan Grenville said, “Not if he keeps drinking like that.” She laughed, and Abrams saw Tom Grenville kick her ankle.
As the car moved off, Van Dorn raised his glass. “To Count Ilie Lepescu, Major Henry Kimberly, Captain John Grenville, and to all those who are not with us tonight.”
They sat in silence as the limousine made its way up Park Avenue. Claudia leaned forward and rested her hand on Abrams’ thigh. He sat back and regarded her. She looked vaguely Semitic in the dim light, and he thought it was his fate to become involved with women who were mirror images of himself. There were no Joan Grenvilles or Katherine Kimberlys in his life, and there were not likely to be. Which, he thought, was probably—definitely—for the best.
George Van Dorn looked as if he were going to propose another toast but instead handed Abrams his glass. “Kill it,” said Van Dorn.
His wife patted his hand as though he’d done something fine and noble. Van Dorn, too, looked pleased with himself for resisting the temptation to arrive at a destination with most of his faculties impaired.