The Talbot Odyssey (46 page)

An unsettling thought came to him: Kalin might have backup people in cars out in the parking lots on either side of the tracks. He was not home free yet. Not even close. He waited.

Karl Roth held his wife’s wrists in a tight grasp. “Get out of here,” he said under his breath. “Get in the van and go home.” His hands were shaking and his voice quavered.

“Like hell I will.” She pulled free of him and backed away.

He took a step toward her, but she skirted across the table and said, “You stupid, you idiotic—you—you—” She stammered over her words and tears streamed down her face. A few kitchen workers turned their heads.

Karl Roth forced a tight smile and looked at the people in the kitchen. He said, “Please begin serving. Go on. This is none of your concern.”

The serving girls began carrying the trays out of the kitchen.

Maggie was torn between exposing her husband and protecting him.

Roth waited until the serving girls had left, then looked back at his wife and held his hands up placatingly. “Now, now, Maggie. Calm yourself.” He moved toward her, but she darted around the table, then hefted a large tray of raw cut vegetables and heaved them toward him.

The tray glanced off his upraised arm and clattered to the floor. She said, “Karl—Karl—help me throw it all out—Karl—don’t let them serve—”

He nodded and made calming motions with his hands as he approached her. “Yes. Yes. Fine.”

She looked into his eyes as he drew near, then she snatched a paring knife from the table. “Stay away, Karl! Stay—”

Claudia Lepescu had come up behind her. Quickly and expertly she applied a half nelson and with her other hand delivered a sharp chopping blow to Maggie’s wrist, causing her to drop the knife. Maggie let out a piercing scream. Claudia brought her hand up over Maggie’s mouth and nose, and Maggie smelled a strange odor, then began to feel dizzy.

Karl Roth rushed forward, and together he and Claudia propelled Maggie into the butler’s pantry, a sort of auxiliary kitchen. Claudia held Maggie, whose struggling was growing weaker, then let her slip to the floor. “This is a strong old lady.” Claudia went to a small copper sink and washed the chloroform off her hands. “I knew she would be trouble.”

Roth looked down at his wife, whose eyes were closed now. “Will she be all right?”

Claudia dried her hands on a towel. “She will feel a great deal better than Mr. Van Dorn’s guests.” She smiled.

Roth was shaking so badly that he had to sit in a chair. “Why tonight? They said it would be Christmas.”

She shrugged. “Christmas, July Fourth, New Year’s Eve—they had many holidays to choose from.” She thought a moment, then added, “I suspect the Americans are too close. Everything is happening very quickly.”

Roth had his face buried in his hands and she saw that he was weeping. His words were barely intelligible. “This is terrible . . . terrible. . . .”

Claudia walked up to him and slapped him sharply across his head. “Stand up!”

Roth stood and faced her, but said nothing.

“Pick her up.”

Roth bent down and took his wife under her arms, and Claudia took her ankles. Together they carried her out the rear of the butler’s pantry, into a small hallway and up the service stairs to the third-floor servants’ quarters. They found a small maid’s room and laid her on the bed.

Roth caught his breath and looked at Claudia. “What should we do now?”

She replied, “I’m going to enjoy the party. You’re going to see that everyone has plenty to eat.”

Roth looked nervously around the small room, as though someone might be there, then said in a low voice, “How much time do we have?”

Claudia glanced at her wristwatch. “About four hours. There won’t be any effects before then.”

Roth stared at her. “What did you put in the bottle? It was to put them to sleep . . . ?”

“You know it was poison.”

He began shaking his head, then nodded ruefully. His voice was barely a whisper. “What if they taste it? Or smell it? Did I put enough on . . . ?”

Claudia looked annoyed. “It was something called ricin, which I am told is extracted from a castor oil bean. That is why it mixed well with the vegetable oil. But unlike the foul castor oil, this has no smell and no taste, and it only needed the light spray because it is so deadly. The blood begins to disintegrate. Death is by suffocation, and regardless of what Androv told you, it is very painful at the end. The KGB is very advanced on the subject of poisons. There will be no survivors.”

Roth sat on the edge of the bed beside his comatose wife. “But . . . but . . . what will happen to me?”

Claudia snapped, “You fool. This is the end. Don’t you understand that? At about the time these people’s blood begins to disintegrate, this
country
will begin to disintegrate. No one will care about you. Just take your stupid wife and go next door. But not until you’ve finished here and cleaned up. Act natural. I’ll be watching you.”

Roth tried to stand, but slumped back on the bed. “But . . . what if . . . if this thing does not happen tonight?”

Claudia laughed. “Well, then we’ll all be a little embarrassed. You will have two hundred bloated corpses ripening in the yard when the morning sun comes up, and the police will want a word with you.” She laughed again, then added. “There is no antidote for ricin.”

Roth stared at her in the dim light.

Claudia walked to the window and looked out onto the lawn and gardens. Over two hundred people milled about or sat at tables under the blue-and-white striped tent. Servants passed around small trays and left larger ones on the tables as instructed. Claudia said, “They are filling their faces. These pigs who have given us so much trouble all these years, they will all be dead by midnight.”

Roth stood and moved to her side. He stared down onto the grounds strung with Chinese lanterns. “There are children down there.”

“They are the lucky ones, Herr Roth. When you see what happens to the rest of this country later, you will not feel sorry for them.”

Roth nodded his head toward the window. “Some of these people have been your friends. The Van Dorns, the Grenvilles, the Kimberly woman. . . . Do you not feel anything?”

“No.” She added with a touch of fatalism in her voice, “What difference would it make? There is no turning back. Whatever is to happen will happen. Most of these people are enemies and would die later anyway. Androv wants them safely dead now so they will present no threat at a critical moment. Also, I think he wants some of them dead for personal reasons.”

“But are
we
safe?”

She looked at him contemptuously. “Is that all that worries you? They told me you were a hero—a resistance fighter who hunted Nazis in the ruins of Berlin as the bombs were falling.”

“One gets old.”

“That is a paradox, is it not? The young with years to live are reckless, and the old worry about their few failing years or months.” She turned and walked toward the door. “Are we safe? Who knows? When the lights go out, is anyone safe?”

Roth remembered the New York blackout of 1977, the looting, rioting, and burning.

Claudia turned back to him. “None of us wishes to be caught in a country in its death throes.
You
remember what that was like, Herr Roth.”

Roth remembered exactly what it had been like. Starvation, mass suicides, summary executions, and disease. The days were nightmares and the nights were hell.

Claudia added, “But it is our duty and our fate to witness this. If we succeed and survive, we will be rewarded.”

Roth nodded. That’s what they’d told him in Berlin in 1945. But this time, at least, there were no more exploiters of the people, no more enemies of the revolution. Odd, he thought, how long it had been since he had spoken or even thought of slogans or words like that. It suddenly occurred to him that he’d stopped believing in the revolution long ago.

Claudia seemed to guess his thoughts. “It’s too late, Roth.” She added in a whisper, “Tomorrow morning the sun will rise on a new world. The struggle will be over, and you can rest. Just survive the next twenty-four hours.” She left the room.

Roth looked back at the unconscious figure of his wife. He remembered as if it were yesterday the last message he’d received from Henry Kimberly in Berlin, and it was, word for word, the whispered message he had just received from this woman.

George Van Dorn stood in his ground-floor study, his hands behind his back, and stared through the bay window. “Quite a party. I do it right.”

Tom Grenville, standing in the center of the room, concurred. “Very nice, George. Should we go outside?”

“No. I hate parties.”

Grenville shrugged. George Van Dorn, he reflected, was somewhat like his nearby mythical neighbor, Jay Gatsby, staging perfect parties that he never attended. “Can I get you a drink, George?”

“No. I’d like to keep a clear head tonight.”

Grenville’s eyebrows arched.

Van Dorn added, “You should too.”

Grenville looked down at the drink in his hand, then placed the glass on an end table.

Van Dorn turned from the window and began striding around the room, hands still behind his back. Grenville watched him, juxtaposed against the walls covered with old World War II campaign maps, and a large mounted globe in the center of the room. Grenville was reminded of Napoleon brooding over the fate of the world. “Something on your mind, George?”

Van Dorn stopped pacing. “Lots of things.” He looked up at the mantel clock. “I guess I should begin my assault on the enemy positions.”

“Assault . . . ? Oh, the fireworks.” Grenville smiled.

Van Dorn nodded. “Sit down, Tom. I want a word with you.”

Grenville sat on the edge of a straight-backed chair.

Van Dorn remained standing. He was silent for some time, then said, “Your father was a man whom I respected. His death after the war from his brutal treatment in the Jap POW camp moved me deeply. More so, I think, than if he’d died in battle.”

Grenville nodded cautiously.

“Anyway, out of respect for him, I’m going to speak to you as an uncle. About your wife.”

Grenville’s face revealed an almost disappointed look, as though he’d expected that Van Dorn was going to confide some important business matter. “Oh . . .” He assumed a neutral expression.

“I want to be tactful, but at the same time direct.” Van Dorn lit a cigar and exhaled a stream of smoke. “She’s fucking nearly everybody. What are you going to do about it?”

“Oh . . .” Grenville ran his hand through his hair and lowered his head. His domestic problem had just become a professional problem. This was serious. He looked up. “I’ll divorce her.”

“Normally, I would concur. But I have a better idea. . . .” He rubbed his heavy jowls, then continued, “Joan is in fine physical shape, as anyone can see.” He stared at Grenville, who seemed, if not actually embarrassed, then at least ill at ease. Van Dorn went on. “You know, Tom, during the war the OSS recruited all types. A good deal of recruiting was done out of expediency. If a person had only one skill or attribute that we needed, then he—or she—was recruited on an ad hoc basis, usually for a one-time-only mission.”

“George, if you’re suggesting that I allow my wife to use her . . . her physical attraction for some mission—”

Van Dorn cut him off with a wave of his arm. “No, Tom. I can find fifty femmes fatales. I am interested in her body, but only in a peripheral way. What I have in mind is a mission that requires someone with a good deal of physical stamina, coupled with a slight build. For all Joan’s charms, she has the build of a boy.” He thought to himself,
I’ve seen better tits and ass on a snake
.

Grenville cleared his throat. “I don’t think Joan would even consider—”

“I have a file on her so thick you could stand on it and change a light bulb. She will be the most impoverished divorcée in Scarsdale, or she will play ball.” Van Dorn stared at the seated figure of Grenville. “I also want you to know that there is a strong element of danger involved in—”

The door suddenly swung open and Van Dorn turned quickly toward it, his hand sliding inside his jacket.

Kitty Van Dorn entered, balancing a tray in one hand.
“Ther
e you are.”

“And there
you
are.”

“And Tom. Where’s Joan? We haven’t seen her for some time.” Kitty smiled.

Grenville stood and smiled back weakly. “She went to the ladies’—”

Kitty said, “What
are
you both doing all alone in this stuffy, smoky room?”

Van Dorn replied, “Tom and I are having a homosexual affair, Kitty.”

“Oh, George.” She offered the tray to Grenville. “Try the pâté. Sit down.”

Grenville did as he was told, in the order he was told.

“Ginger loves the pâté.”

Van Dorn commented, “I’ve got a wife named Kitty and a cat named Ginger.”

Kitty turned and held the tray out to her husband. “Karl really outdid himself this time. I’ve never seen such variety.”

Van Dorn picked up a toast point covered with pink salmon mousse in the shape of a rosebud. He noticed globules of what looked like oil or glycerin on the mousse, hesitated, then put it in his mouth and chewed. “Pussy food. Next time we’ll roast a few steers and hogs.”

Kitty set the tray on his desk. “George, everyone is waiting for the fireworks.”

“Well, if they’re paying for them, tell them to give the order to fire when ready.”

A dark frown crossed her brow, as though she had just remembered something. “George, who are those pyrotechnicians? I’ve never seen them before. What happened to the Grinaldis?”

“They blew themselves up.”

She turned to Grenville. “The Grinaldis have national reputations as pyrotechnicians. George does it right.”

Grenville nodded. “Yes, he—”

Van Dorn turned abruptly to his wife. “Have you seen Pembroke?”

She thought a moment. “Pembroke . . .”

Van Dorn snapped, “The tall Limey with an icicle up his arse.”

“Oh . . . yes . . . a friend of Tom’s . . . and Joan’s . . .” She glanced at Grenville, remembering there was some talk of trouble at the May Day party, then turned quickly back to her husband. “Mr. Pembroke wasn’t feeling well and went to his room.”