The old man’s voice was moist with regret. “Oh, M’sieur! Oh! M’sieur! See what they have done to us! Poor Madame. You have seen her? She is well?”
For the past four days, Hel had been at the hospital in Oloron, leaving Hana’s side only when ordered to by the doctors.
Pierre’s rheumy eyes drooped with compassion as he realized his patron’s physical state. “But look at you, M’sieur!” A bandage was wrapped under Hel’s chin and over his head, to hold the jaw in place while it mended; bruises on his face were still plum colored; inside his shirt, his upper arm was wrapped tightly to his chest to prevent movement of the shoulder, and both his hands were bandaged from the wrists to the second knuckle.
“You don’t look so good yourself, Pierre,” he said, his voice muffled and dental.
Pierre shrugged. “Oh, I shall be all right. But see, our hands are the same!” He lifted his hands, revealing wraps of gauze covering the gel on his burned palms. He had a bruise over one eyebrow.
Hel noticed a dark stain down the front of Pierre’s unbuttoned shirt. Obviously, a glass of wine had slipped from between the awkward paddles at the ends of his wrists. “How did you hurt your head?”
“It was the bandits, M’sieur. One of them struck me with a rifle butt when I was trying to stop them.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“Oh, M’sieur! It was too terrible!”
“Just tell me about it. Be calm, and tell me.”
“Perhaps we could go to the gate house? I shall offer you a little glass, and maybe I will have one myself. Then I shall tell you.”
“All right.”
As they walked to Pierre’s gate house, the old gardener suggested that M. Hel stay with him, for the bandits had spared his little home.
Hel sat in a deep chair with broken springs from which litter had been thrown by Pierre to make a space for his guest. The old man had drunk from the bottle, an easier thing to hold, and was now staring out over the valley from the small window of his second-floor living quarters.
“I was working, M’sieur. Attending to a thousand things. Madame had called down to Tardets for a car to take her to where the airplanes land, and I was waiting for it to arrive. I heard a buzzing from far out over the mountains. The sound grew louder. They came like huge flying insects, skimming over the hills, close to the earth.”
“What came?”
“The bandits! In autogiros!”
“In helicopters?”
“Yes. Two of them. With a great noise, they landed in the park, and the ugly machines vomited men out. The men all had guns. They were dressed in mottled green clothes, with orange berets. They shouted to one another as they ran toward the château. I called after them, telling them to go away. The women of the kitchen screamed and fled toward the village. I ran after, the bandits, threatening to tell M’sieur Hel on them if they did not go at once. One of them hit me with his gun, and I fell down. Great noise! Explosions! And all the time the two great autogiros sat on the lawn, their wings turning around and around. When I could stand, I ran toward the château. I was willing to fight them, M’sieur. I was willing to fight them!”
“I know.”
“Yes, but they were by then running back toward their machines. I was knocked down again! When I got to the château… Oh, M’sieur! All gone! Smoke and flame everywhere! Everything! Everything! Then, M’sieur…Oh, God in mercy! I saw Madame at the window of the burning part. All around her, flame, I rushed in. Fiery things were falling all about me. When I got to her, she was just standing there. She could not find her way out! The windows had burst in upon her, and the glass… Oh, M’sieur, the glass!” Pierre had been struggling to contain his tears. He snatched off his beret and covered his face with it. There was a diagonal line across his forehead separating white skin from his deeply weatherbeaten face. Not for forty years had his beret been off while he was outdoors. He scrubbed his eyes with his beret, snorted loudly, and put it on again. “I took Madame and brought her out. The way was blocked by burning things. I had to pull them away with my hands. But I got out! I got her out! But the glass!…” Pierre broke down; he gulped as tears flowed from his nostrils.
Hel rose and took the old man in his arms. “You were brave, Pierre.”
“But I am the patron when you are not here! And I failed to stop them!”
“You did all a man could do.”
“I tried to fight them!”
“I know.”
“And Madame? She will be well?”
“She will live.”
“And her eyes?”
Hel looked away from Pierre as he drew a slow breath and let it out in a long jet. For a time he did not speak. Then, clearing his throat, he said, “We have work to do, Pierre.”
“But, M’sieur. What work? The château is gone!”
“We shall clean up and repair what is left. I’ll need your help to hire the men and to guide them in their work.”
Pierre shook his head. He had failed to protect the château. He was not to be trusted.
“I want you to find men. Clear the rubble. Seal the west wing from the weather. Repair what must be repaired to get us through the winter. And next spring, we shall start to build again.”
“But, M’sieur! It will take forever to rebuild the château!”
“I didn’t say we would ever finish, Pierre.”
Pierre considered this. “All right,” he said, “all right. Oh, you have mail, M’sieur. A letter and a package. They are here somewhere.” He rummaged about the chaos of bottomless chairs, empty boxes, and refuse of no description with which he had furnished his home. “Ah! Here they are. Just where I put them for safekeeping.”
Both the package and letter were from Maurice de Lhandes. While Pierre fortified himself with another draw at the bottle, Hel read Maurice’s note:
My Dear Friend:
I wadded up and threw away my first epistolary effort because it began with a phrase so melodramatic as to bring laughter to me and, I feared, embarrassment to you. And yet, I can find no other way to say what I want to say. So here is that sophomoric first phrase:
When you read this, Nicholai, I shall be dead.
(Pause here for my ghostly laughter and your compassionate embarrassment.)
There are many reasons I might cite for my close feelings for you, but these three will do. First: Like me, you have always given the governments and the companies reason for fear and concern. Second:
You were the last person, other than Estelle, to whom I spoke during my life. And third: Not only did you never make a point of my physical peculiarity, you also never overlooked it, or brutalized my sensibilities by talking about it man to man.
I am sending you a gift (which you have probably already opened, greedy pig). It is something that may one day be of benefit to you. Do you remember my telling you that I had something on the United States of America? Something so dramatic that it would make the Statue of Liberty fall back and offer you whatever orifice you choose to use? Well, here it is.
I have sent you only the photocopy; I have destroyed the originals. But the enemy will not know that I have destroyed them, and the enemy does not know that I am dead. (Remarkable how peculiar it is to write that in the present tense!)
They will have no way to know that the originals are not in my possession in the button-down mode; so, with a little histrionic skill on your part, you should be able to manipulate them as you will.
As you know, native intelligence has always saved me from the foolishness of believing in life after death. But there can be nuisance value after death—and that thought pleases me.
Please visit Estelle from time to time, and, make her feel desirable. And give my love to your magnificent Oriental.
With all amicable sentiments,
PS. Did I mention the other night during dinner that the morels did not have enough lemon juice? I should have.
Hel broke the string on the package and scanned the contents. Affidavits, photographs, records, all revealing the persons and governmental organizations involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and with the cover-up of certain aspects of that assassination. Particularly interesting were statements from a person identified as the Umbrella Man, from another called the Man on the Fire Escape, and a third, the Knoll Commando.