The tapping at the door was insistent. It had worked itself into her dreams before awakening her. In her dreams she was crouched in the heavy dust of a Ceylonese village street. On the far edge of the jungle a machine gun made an odd sleepy noise.
She sat up in the darkness, her palms moist. The tapping sounded again. She stepped into her slippers, padded over to the door and said, close to the panel, “Who is it?”
A woman’s voice, oddly familiar, spoke: “Let me come in, please.” Something of panic and something of despair was in the voice.
“Who are you?”
“I’m a friend of Roger’s. Please. Quickly!”
Leaving the chain on, she opened the door and looked cautiously out. A young woman with heavy facial bones, brown hair, smart clothes stood outside. “Hand me your purse through the crack in the door,” Latmini said.
Quickly the girl pushed the purse through, Latmini shut the door, unclasped the purse, looked quickly inside. She snapped it shut, took off the chain and opened the door. The girl came in hurriedly and Latmini locked the door behind her.
Latmini clicked on the bright overhead lights. They stood for an awkward moment, looking at each other inquisitively.
“It is very late. Won’t you sit down?” Latmini said.
The girl sat on the edge of the couch in a posture of strain. “Who are you?” Latmini asked.
“Wanda Dziemansek,” the girl said. “It means nothing to you, I know. I talked to you before. I answered the phone when you called. I couldn’t come earlier. I... I love Roger Darron.”
“I don’t see how that can possibly interest me,” Latmini said.
“I know how he is,” Wanda said. “It has happened before. I will not let it happen again. When he came to see me, he beat me. I knew then that you are beautiful. He beats me when he likes someone else. He drank a great deal and fell asleep. He will not notice that I am gone.”
Latmini frowned. “I don’t understand all this.”
The girl stood up suddenly. She began to pace back and forth. She changed suddenly from a rather stolid-looking brown-haired girl into something of fire and ice and fury. “I tell you that this will not happen again. I, Wanda Dziemansek, will prevent it. Sure, he took me out of a D. P. camp near Munich — but it doesn’t matter anymore. I will not wait patiently for him to come back to me again. I am grateful to him no longer.”
“I have no interest whatsoever in your Roger Darron.”
“It makes no difference. If he likes you, he will find a way. I know how it is done. He knows things about you. Oh, he is very clever.” She mimicked his tone: “My dear Miss Walters. You would hate to have me advise the authorities of your real reason for being here, wouldn’t you? There will be no need to do that—”
“But isn’t he, as a go-between for illicit sales of arms and ammunitions, as vulnerable as anyone else?” Latmini asked.
“There is no evidence against him. None! And he has taken out his first papers. He is better protected than you others who only visit.”
“But why do you come here to tell me this nonsense?” Latmini asked.
Wanda tapped her chest. “Because this time it will be different. This time I will go to the authorities and I will tell them why Ehrlich has come here. I will tell which U. N. delegates have been contacted by Ehrlich. I will tell them why Roger Darron has received word from Sakna Kahn. I will expose the whole stinking mess. You think of what I have told you when Roger comes to you with one of his — so delicate proposals. You hear me!”
“Wait a moment, Miss Dziemansek. I want to ask you—”
“There is nothing more to say to you. I despise you, Miss Walters, or whatever your name is. I could spit into your face! I have seen war, Miss Walters. I have seen the bombs land on the villages. I have seen children with half their faces blown away crawling through the dirt and crying for someone no longer there. Let me go.”
“But I don’t—”
“You and your kind want it all to come back again. Leave Roger Darron alone!”
There was nothing more to say. Latmini Perez let the girl out, shut the door behind her. Latmini felt emotionally exhausted. She went back to bed but she could not sleep. She thought of Roger Darron’s vague eyes, of his florid face. Obviously, if he was able to gain the release of Wanda from a D. P. camp, he must have been in a position of some authority. She wondered if Roger Darron would do as Wanda believed he would.
Suddenly she sat bolt upright, her heart pounding. If Wanda went to the authorities, the entire plan would fail. With Darron out of the way, no one would be able to tell Sakna Kahn exactly what had happened quickly enough. Quickly enough to prevent what Kahn had threatened if Latmini failed to carry out her instructions. Kahn would believe that Latmini Perez had betrayed him.
She thought for a time of the towering hills of Ratnapura, of the neat rows of the clipped tea bushes that marched over the irregular high fields, of the warm taste of arrack and honey. She muffled the sound of her weeping with the corner of the blanket...
Chapter Two
Salesman of Death
She managed to smile at the man behind the desk as she said. “You see, it would be very awkward if it turned out to be someone else. But I believe that I know him. If you would please point him out to me. Mr. Ehrlich. When he comes through the lobby.” She let him see the five imprint on the folded bill she held. She made her smile warmer. “But he must not know, you understand.”
“Perfectly, Miss Walters.” The folded bill was whisked off with a furtive motion. Suddenly the desk clerk lowered his voice. “He’s coming toward the desk now.” There was a glass panel, a mirror, in one of the columns behind the clerk. Latmini glanced into it, saw a man in a neatly cut gray suit, a folded topcoat over his arm. He smiled at the clerk, tossed his key onto the top of the desk and walked toward the lobby door.
“Is he the one you know?” the clerk asked eagerly.
Latmini frowned. “I do not know. It has been so many years. Thank you.” She turned away. Karl Ehrlich was bigger than she had guessed. A full six foot two or three and very broad across the shoulders. He moved with a quick light step — the step of a trained athlete, in spite of the fact that he was close to forty.
Ehrlich stood just inside the lobby door, working his arms into his topcoat, staring out at the crowds on the sidewalk. She wondered how it could best be done. Of course, she could always walk up and say, “I wish to talk to you, Herr Ehrlich.”
But then there was the danger that he would be alarmed by the blunt approach, feel her so lacking in discretion that he would be afraid to make any sort of deal with her.
With sudden decision, she walked by him, pulled open the heavy door and stepped out. She stopped too close to the door and, as she saw it closing, she moved just enough to catch the edge of her coat in the door. She turned, pretending awkwardness, saw him loom up through the glass, pull the door back. “Allow me, please,” he said in a gentle voice, a curiously soft voice for so large a man.
He looked at the edge of her coat, bent and touched the soiled spot with a manicured finger. “I do not believe it is torn at all. You are lucky.”
“Thank you. If you had not come along, I probably would have tom it trying to pull away.”
She smiled up into his face, saw the sudden quickening of interest. “Excuse my boldness,” he said. “You are not American, no?”
“Ceylonese. Would you have guessed?”
“No, I would have said Egyptian, possibly Turkish.”
She made a face and they both laughed. She said, “You are not an American either. I would say German. Possibly Austrian.”
“You are very clever,” he said. “Ah, there is a taxi. What way are you going, Miss—”