“Kek? Kek? Are you still there?”
“I’m still here.”
“What do you plan to do?”
He stared at the smooth surface of the desk without seeing it.
“I don’t know.” He closed his eyes, squeezing them shut, pressing the lids tightly with the fingers of his free hand, trying desperately to concentrate. It was useless. He opened them again, examining the broad space of the room carefully, seeing in the growing shadows a host of ghostly figures. They froze in expectancy as his eyes tracked them down, as if breathlessly awaiting his decision. He stared them down, forcing them back into the frieze of the wallpaper, into the still folds of the draperies.
“André. Do you have a telephone where I can reach you?”
“Yes. Moncada 917.” Again André attempted lightness. “Also untapped, or at least Michel tells me. Although in my case it’s only that I’m not that important.”
Huuygens reached for his pen, marking down the number. “And when is the best time to reach you?”
“Tell me when you’ll call. I’ll be here.”
The strong fingers holding the pen scrawled a wavering line across the sheet of paper, returned to underscore the number several times fiercely, as if each stroke were a knife thrust across his enemy’s throat, and then tossed the pen aside, almost wearily. “Before morning. Will you be there? I have to think this thing out.”
“I’ll be here until I hear from you. I’ll go out and get something to eat, and then I’ll come right back.” There was a moment’s hesitation. “Will you be wanting to speak with Michel?”
“I don’t know. I have to think.”
“And, Kek?”
“Yes?”
There was a deep chuckle from the other, a remembered sound from the days of the Resistance, the revengeful sound of a man with an enemy firmly in his gunsight, and this time no chance of error from wind or distance. “We’ll be having that drink together soon, eh?”
“Very soon,” Huuygens said quietly. “And in Lisbon.”
“Good! I’ll be hearing from you, then.”
“Before morning. And thank you very much, André.”
He placed the receiver almost exactingly on its hook, stared at it a moment, and then slowly came to his feet. He walked to the bar, picked up his drink and studied it a moment, and then methodically poured it down the drain. Tonight he had a lot of thinking to do — thinking and planning. And while careful planning was the basis of his success in his profession, tonight his plan had to be even more exacting of his brain, for tonight he would be facing a personal element never present before. He was smart enough to realize the dangers such involvement might offer to his thinking. No — tonight the plan had to be perfect in every detail. The slightest error could not be tolerated; the tiniest loophole had to be firmly caulked. Nor could there be any recklessness, nor any dashing chance-taking; the stakes this time were far too high. And liquor and thinking did not mix.
He moved to an easy chair in one corner and sank into it, leaning back, trying to force himself to relax and his mind to begin its analysis. The sun had dipped below the edge of the Bois, and the room was shadowed, but he preferred it that way. He tented his fingers, pressing them together with all his force, and then suddenly released them; the exercise was repeated several times. It was a means he often used to command his body and mind to obedience, to relax his tensions; his hands came down to the arms of the chair, resting, while his mind began to consider the problem.
But where to begin? Which step to take first, and from the essential and irrevocable first step, which move to follow? And how could he even begin to plan that first step when, despite everything, memories continued to fight for possession of his attention, flooding his mind completely with a mad jumble of people and events and attitudes and places and — worst of all — bitter emotions? Under such circumstances, concentration was impossible!
He squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head angrily at himself, and then suddenly relaxed. Of course! Simply stop fighting yourself, he said to himself, let the memories come. Let them emerge from that locked vault where they had been forcibly thrust and held so many years ago. But let them come in decent order, honestly and accurately, and then let them depart, leaving your mind purged, freed of the slavery of bitterness, coldly ready to go to work.
Where to begin? In the mud and cold of that miserable cave back of Allanche? No. That would come later. If the purposes of this self-flagellation were to be satisfied, it had to be done properly and completely. Go back to that day in the library of the Hochmann mansion, when you were waiting for Stefan, with the sound of the bombers over Warsaw echoing in the huge paneled room, and Jadzia had come in upon you...
3
It had not been difficult to enter the large house undetected; ever since he and Stefan had met four years earlier as entering students in the Art College of the university, the Hochmann house had been a second home to him. He therefore used a little-known and long-abandoned door that led from an old icehouse to the small pantry adjoining the huge kitchens. The Germans were on the roads as well as in the air, and he had no intention of being detained and questioned before his mission had even started. A radio blasting from a light pole in the square in Targówek as he had come through, walking warily, approaching the bridge, had announced the passage of enemy troops through Molotov and Kielce, and said the Germans were closing in on the city. Even the government spokesman, quoted blandly by the radio, doubted if the line on the east shore of the Wisla, running erratically from Praga to Brod, could be maintained in face of the merciless bombardment.
He paused, listening carefully. The kitchens were silent, except for the humming of the new electric refrigerator; those servants who had not already fled were probably in the upper reaches of the house, hastily packing for evacuation, or watching the tiny antics of the planes in the sky to the north from the foolish vantage point of the undereave dormers. A quick cautious step and he was at the angle of the main hallway, looking down past the large dining room and the library toward the two wide drawing rooms in the front, facing the Jez Czerniakowskie. The passage was deserted. Feeling a bit safer here in the cool dimness of the friendly corridor, and with the familiar spring of the thick carpet beneath his feet, he moved guardedly toward the front of the house, intent upon finding Stefan.
The sound of voices coming from the front drawing room made him pause uncertainly; the person speaking, of course, was Stefan, but the high, slightly stuttering pitch that usually made him smile a bit in pity now sounded rather imperious. Poor Stefan! Still, he was Jadzia’s brother, and that counted for something. In fact, he realized, it counted for everything. He started forward and then stopped again, suddenly this time. There had been a response in German, authoritative but not argumentative. His eyes narrowed as he moved automatically to the wall as if for protection; he scanned the empty hallway once again, quickly, intently, and then stepped into the library, closing the door silently behind him. Whatever the reason for a German-speaking visitor, his own presence must remain undisclosed until the other had left and he could see Stefan alone. The hastily formed student committee needed money to fight the enemy, and his assignment had been to contact Stefan. Since the death of the old Count and Countess Hochmann the year before, Stefan was a very rich young man. And despite some of his rather wild notions and his tremendous inferiority complex, he was still his friend, still his future brother-in-law, and more important at the moment, he was still a Pole.