Ride a Pale Horse Page 3

  “Acid rain.” It seemed to Karen that there could be disappointment in his eyes, but he joined in the laughter around the table. “It’s true,” she told Duvivier and Engel.

  “Ah, yes,” Engel remembered, “you didn’t get much of an answer on that subject yesterday. Better luck today?”

  “Well, he did listen to my questions and gave me a long description of acid rain’s effect. He didn’t do too well on its cause, though.” Yes, Bor was definitely disappointed. She glanced at her watch. Still five minutes to wait, heaven help her.

  “Of course,” Duvivier said, “miningis one of Czechoslovakia’s chief money-makers. Their heavy industries burn a lot of coal. Don’t they?” he prodded Bor.

  “No more than French or American factories use,” Bor said.

  He was helped, inadvertently, by Engel’s natural curiosity. “Anything else you picked up that was interesting?” he was asking Karen.

  “Nothing for any headlines. But I did get a promise that he’d make sure I stayed at a central hotel on my next visit here.”

  “Next visit?” Duvivier shook his head. “Yes, there are advantages to being a woman.”

  “Chauvinist,” Karen told him lightly.

  “No ‘male’ attached?”

  “Always unnecessary. Redundant.” She looked at her watch, rose abruptly. “I’ll be late,” she said in consternation. “I’m being collected at the front door in twenty minutes. Goodbye, all.” The men were on their feet, shaking hands. Bor’s bow was brief.

  “My card,” Engel said, producing it. “Look me up in Hamburg if you are ever there.”

  “You still have my telephone number?” Duvivier asked.

  “Most definitely.” A warm smile for him. She liked this middle-aged, saturnine Frenchman. And he had helped her out on acid rain: Bor had been put on the defensive; no more questions. None of his business anyway, she thought as she hurried towards the lobby. Or was it?

  The elevator was slow. It was quarter past four by the time she reached her room. Her envelopes lay on the desk, neatly tied into a bundle with heavy black tape. And a seal to declare it inviolate.

  She could riffle through the corners of the envelopes, though, and check their numbers. All present. Including Tuesday: Village Visits, coffee stains and all. She hesitated. She couldn’t extract that envelope without risking a loosening of the tape, even a break in its seal. Better leave it virgin-pure until she reached Vienna; it looked a nicely official package as it was. Censors’ approval had even been stamped on the lower left-hand corner of each envelope.

  She still hesitated. Don’t look inside that envelope. Why? The less she knew, the safer she would be? And yet—she ought to know what she was carrying out of this country, she ought to know, even for the sake of a possible story. She was torn three ways: responsibility as a journalist; responsibility as a citizen (You will be helping your country, too); responsibility to a human being (My life is in your hands).

  But was all that really true? How would she know if it was? Only a quick reading of the letters—and were they letters?—could tell her the real facts.

  She didn’t have time to find out. A knock at the door, a maid waiting to take down her luggage, ended all temptation. For the time being, certainly. Hurriedly, she locked the envelopes into her briefcase, reached for her white tweed jacket in the wardrobe, shouldered her purse. “One bag, one typewriter,” she told the woman. “No, not the briefcase! I carry that myself.”

  With a sigh, she inspected herself in the mirror. She looked perfectly normal. A good thing that the beating of her heart didn’t show through her Chanel-type suit. You’ll do, she told herself. She wished at this moment that she hadn’t thought, quite suddenly, of Tony Marcus. Her hand tightened on her briefcase. Inwardly, she flinched as she entered the crowded elevator and found two uniformed officials jammed close to her. Outwardly, she seemed oblivious to any attention paid to her profile by the men, to her clothes by the women, accepting their stares as she always did.

  She saw Vasek in the distance, pretending not to notice her safe departure. It was exactly half past four and the car waiting.

  “What’s the difference between Switzerland and Czechoslovakia?” she asked its driver, who would no doubt see her loaded right onto the plane, making sure she had no quiet conversation with any stranger or accepted any package.

  He shook his head, looked blankly at her as if he were lost in the woods they had now left behind.

  “There, the trains run on time. Here, the people run on schedule.”

  It took him almost a minute before he said stiffly. “We are efficient. You have noticed?”

  How could I help it? “Most efficient,” she assured him. And what about Switzerland?

  He relaxed into a smile. Lucky I had the sense, she thought, not to say “people are made to run on schedule.” I nearly did: it was tempting. And now, on the straight highway, she was being given an explanation of such efficiency. It was because of their education, the best there was. No illiteracy, here. In his third year of elementary school, he had even started a foreign language—obligatory.

  “Russian?”

  He nodded. “Later, we have German or English—often both.”

  In that case, with all those linguists walking the streets, why did I need to have an interpreter as my escort? But she was on her best behaviour, resisting all temptation, and the journey to the airport went without incident. Her passage through the checkpoints was without incident, too. Fortunate, she thought, that all these X-ray machines did not register her dry mouth and racing pulse.

  4

  A summer afternoon in Vienna, a successful meeting completed with a most likely candidate for high political office, and now a peaceful hour or two to sit at a café table and relax. Karen Cornell’s mood was improving. She slowed her pace to enjoy the enticing shop windows, the people strolling as leisurely as she was, listening to their voices, watching faces and gestures—no strain here, no tensions. Kärntnerstrasse was a quiet and colourful street where people talked and discussed, even disagreed openly, or read from a choice of varied newspapers (foreign as well as Austrian) as they slowly drank their coffee. No pressure, no hurry. The background to this leisure, this life-as-it-should-be, was only the soft sound of shoes on the pavement. Yet a few years ago, long-time visitors like Hubert Schleeman had told her, Kärntnerstrasse had been cobbled, had trolley-car lines and heavy traffic. But some visionary had the sense to wave a magic wand and presto! café tables with sunshades on a smoothly surfaced street, window boxes and giant planters overflowing with flowers, traffic banished, pedestrians everywhere. Yes, her mood was improving. And yet memories of last night kept edging back.

  Strange it was, when she was safely in bed in a free city (no interpreters or escorts, no overscheduled programmes), that she had lain awake, too troubled to sleep. Although she ached with physical exhaustion, all her busy mind could think of was Vasek, Vasek and that envelope, Vasek and his sombre predictions of world disaster. Over and over again, she had recalled his words, his phrases, his tone of voice; and her eyes—refusing to close and let her forget—had stared at the ceiling’s shadows and seen the garden, the terrace, Vasek, as if they were all part of a staged scene and she were in a front-row seat.

  Had it been a scene staged for her benefit? She no longer believed that. Until she had boarded her flight to Vienna, she had doubts mixed with fears. But no one had detained her, no one had led her away for questioning like Tony Marcus. She was free, and with her uncensored material intact. Vasek had not been trying to entrap her. Whatever he had been or had done in the past, at this moment in his life he was being honest. The garden scene was no myth; staged, perhaps, with careful planning, but real. Desperately real.

  She had plunged suddenly into sleep as dawn tried to steal through the red velvet curtains in her room, and lain oblivious to everything until eleven. After coffee and a brioche, Austrian version, she had washed and begun choosing her clothes for the interview. But he
r thoughts were on her briefcase. Half-dressed, she pulled it out from under her bed and flicked its coded numbers to unlock it: 0615—the month and day of her wedding to Alan Fern. A safe enough sequence: who would have thought that Karen Lee Cornell, a widow of four years, would be such a sentimentalist? We all have our weaknesses, she reminded herself sadly, and Alan was mine.

  What would he have been advising her now, if he were here? Probably, he’d laugh and say, “Just forget about Vasek and that damned envelope. How the hell did you get mixed up in a business like that anyway?” Yet, remembering Alan, she wondered if he wouldn’t have got mixed up in a business like that, too. Vasek had really played unfair, telling her that his life was in her hands. She wanted no more feeling of guilt over a death. Hadn’t she enough sense of remorse over Alan’s?

  She had sat, without moving, looking down at the neatly taped package of manila envelopes in her briefcase, thinking of Alan’s last evening in New York. Both of them were ready to leave for a first-night play, to be followed by a party at its author’s house. Alan hadn’t wanted to go: he was tired, dispirited—he had been working too much, his third novel (after two spectacular successes) was almost half-finished, but he wasn’t happy about it, was threatening to scrap it and begin something new. A night off the chain would do him good, she had urged. And looking at her expectant face, he said, “We’ll go. You look like a million dollars, love. You’ll slay them all.” So they went. And attended the post-theatre supper; too much food, too much drink, too much talk, too much everything. At three in the morning, they returned home. At nine, awakened by the alarm clock to let her catch the New York flight to Washington for her usual three-day visit to the Spectator’s offices, she left their bed to wash and dress. Alan seemed still deep in sleep when she came to kiss him a light goodbye and found his eyes staring, his mouth fallen open, his face turning to stone.

  “Oh, God,” she said now, right in the middle of Kärntnerstrasse. And damn Vasek, she added silently. She hadn’t opened that envelope as yet, had left it intact even if she had pulled the black tape off the bundle. On impulse, she had wrapped the coffee-stained envelope in some tissue paper from a folded dress, bound it into a neat parcel with the tape minus its seal. Now it was in the Sacher Hotel safe, while the rest of the envelopes lay in her unlocked briefcase. Probably an unnecessary precaution, possibly stupid. She stared at her reflection in a polished shop window, regained her composure. And then she saw the man.

  He was standing across the street, not much more than thirty feet away, and he was watching her. The same man—she was almost sure of that—yes, it could be the same man she had seen as she had passed through customs at the Vienna airport yesterday evening. Then, he had followed her out to the taxis and taken the cab after hers. She had glimpsed him early this afternoon as she left the Sacher. But he could be another hotel guest, couldn’t he? Or had lunch there. Or something. Coincidences did happen.

  She swung around to face the other side of the street to have a clearer look, let her eyes drift along Kärntnerstrasse as if she were undecided whether to walk to its end. Just as quickly, he turned his back on her, became absorbed in the window in front of him—ladies’ underwear, black and red lace in abundance. Without a second glance at him, she retraced her steps, keeping to her side of the street, searching for an empty table under a bright umbrella.

  All were occupied. She would have to go indoors, choose a café with wide windows open to the sun-warmed air. She found a likely place, cool and dark inside, and chose a seat to one side of the central window’s frame that would half hide her from the street. She saw the man again. Yes, he had followed her; and now—at this moment—angry and uncertain as he searched through the outside tables. Her entrance into this almost empty room had been abrupt. She relaxed as he walked on slowly, trying the next café. Given up, had he? She ordered coffee with whipped cream and a slice of Linzer torte from a glass-covered counter filled with the most delectable cakes. Why not? She was celebrating.

  Too soon, however. The man, middle-aged, grey-haired, dressed sedately in brown, hadn’t given up. He was just outside her window box, his pace steady. Had he noticed her blue dress before she had drawn back? She lifted her cup, sipped her coffee through its floating mound of whipped cream, kept her eyes looking straight ahead at the mirrored wall on the side of the room. It gave a clear reflection of what lay behind her back: entrance doorway, cashier’s desk, patisserie display. The man entered.

  She bent her head, concentrated on the coffee, and when she risked another glance at the long mirror she saw him in front of the cakes and tarts, speaking with the white-uniformed girl who presided over them. Choosing a slice of Sacher torte? No. The girl pointed her silvered tongs, not at an eclair or napoleon, but in the direction of a side corridor near the end of the room. There, a discreet notice proclaimed TOILETTEN, and a red arrow pointed the way.

  Ah well, thought Karen, and smiled. She could blame her amusement on her white moustache of cream. She wiped it off, brought out her lipstick to repair the damage.

  The man reappeared. That was quick—barely two minutes by her watch. A record, surely. She watched him leave, walking briskly. Over the window box at her elbow, blue and pink and purple petunias spilling towards the sun-filled street, she saw him hurry on his way down Kärntnerstrasse, looking to neither right nor left. That’s all he had been, a man in search of a toilet. She shook her head over her suspicions. And then amusement ended. She frowned as she replaced the lipstick in her shoulder bag and slung it over the back of her chair. A moment more of disturbing thought, and she hailed her waitress. “Tell me, please—are the washrooms over there?” She pointed at the distant sign.

  “Yes. Straight along the corridor, then down the staircase.”

  Down a flight of stairs? Then up? That could take almost two minutes. “Is there a telephone?”

  “Just around the corner.”

  “In the corridor itself?”

  “Jawohl,” the girl said again. And when Karen didn’t move, she asked, “The lady wishes something else?”

  The lady is an idiot. She’d better straighten out her mind before she walks out into the street. “Another cup of coffee, please. No cream.”

  The pink-cheeked face became rounder in astonishment. The yellow curls shook in disbelief. “The lady didn’t like the cream?”

  “It defeated me. I need more practice.” More practice in everything, Karen decided as the waitress hurried off with a puzzled look in her china-blue eyes. If she didn’t understand my last remarks, she is at least sure about the coffee. My German can’t be too bad. Travel... how simple it seemed until I stepped through Vasek’s door.

  She studied the street. What inconspicuous man had been summoned by telephone to wait for her out there? But if he was assigned to dogging her footsteps, how would he recognise her? According to the movies, the brown suit should have been hovering outside to identify her quietly. They’d hardly work that angle right in this room where she would notice the two of them together even if they tried to keep apart. She leaned forward to see as much of the street, of the tables outside, as possible. The brown suit had definitely left, had made no contact.

  The coffee came, a pot of it no less. Perhaps her German hadn’t been so good after all. But the strong black brew was welcome. She stopped watching the street, asking herself quite another question. If I am being followed, then why? Is Vasek under suspicion? Is anyone who talked with him automatically under surveillance? Even here—in Austria? Suddenly, she felt chilled. And afraid. Thank God she had left the envelope secure in the safe of a reliable hotel. She might very well have followed her first idea: don’t leave it behind, keep it close to you, tuck it into your handbag with your passport and other valuables.

  A purse snatcher? she wondered, thinking once more about the brown suit. A foreigner, a woman by herself, a bag slung over her shoulder—if she had walked into a quiet lane or been jammed by a crowd, would he or an accomplice have attempted a snatch? It
was a common practice for women travelling alone to carry jewellery in their handbags. She relaxed slightly, sipped the coffee. Perhaps that was all the little man thought of her—a likely quarry who wore good clothes and could afford the Sacher Hotel. (He wouldn’t know about expense accounts or that her gold necklace, bracelet, earrings, and wedding ring were all she ever travelled with.)

  A movement and laughter at the entrance caught her attention. She looked at the mirrored wall: three people—two men and a girl. “Well, look who’s here!” one of the men called out and left the table he had almost chosen to come forward to hers. She set down her cup in astonishment.

  The last time she had seen Sam Waterman was in Hubert Schleeman’s office at the Spectator. Five years ago? Yes, almost five, and Waterman hadn’t been in such an amiable mood then; he had just resigned on the spot. She had been given the job he had expected to have—he had been two years writing about Washington personalities for Schleeman; she had been working only a year on that column. He had stormed into the office to say he was quitting. It was an embarrassing moment for her, a nasty one on all counts. But at this moment, with his smile and friendly voice as he shook her hand, he seemed to have dropped any grudge against her, any feeling of bitterness and anger. His violent interruption of Schleeman’s discussion with her about her new responsibilities was obviously something he wished forgotten. She would be glad to comply. She always felt a twinge of guilt whenever she thought of him; not guilt, exactly—something more like regret. He had been good at his job, certainly as good as she had been. He could have done VIP interviews with considerable success. He was a most personable man—as long as he didn’t rage into an office—tall, a rugged face that other men seemed to trust and women liked, frank brown eyes, a firm handshake.

  Introductions were being made: Andreas Kellner, most serious and proper; Rita, his girl, definitely adoring and slightly in awe. Very pretty, of course, and casually dressed in tight jeans and an oversized shirt. Kellner, by contrast, wore a prim outfit—a three-piece navy blue suit that seemed inappropriate for an afternoon of café hopping in Vienna. It was also a tight fit, but he showed no sign of acknowledging its heat, didn’t even loosen his collar and closely knotted tie, although his round face was pink and his broad brow damp. Sam Waterman was a compromise in his dress: blue jeans, too, but with tie and white shirt (a drip-dry that had been wrung out too tightly and left with creases) and a wrinkled seersucker jacket slung over his shoulders. Possibly he had been travelling. As for Kellner, perhaps he was travelling, too—he was a journalist from Bonn, she was told—and living out of a suitcase, as most of us do, with little choice in clothes. As for Rita—all giggles and gurgles, and not one show of intelligence so far.