Firmly, he lifted the teacup of whiskey to his lips and took a good sip, then set it back in the saucer, as prim and proper as at an old lady's tea party. "Like I told you, I don't give a damn."
I took a breath. "I'm just afraid of one thing. They may think you warned him. When they don't find him in Paris, they might come back here."
"Let them. I've got a shotgun. This time I'll be ready."
"You're sure?"
He shrugged. "I can't leave them anyway. Not for more than twenty-four hours."
I came into the room and sat down beside him; and then— the one gesture of sympathy I thought might be acceptable— I took a little whiskey myself. I sipped, and let its burning path wind down my throat. Then I murmured, "Just a couple of things. According to the police, Harry killed himself. And it does look that way. But does it make sense to you? If these people had been after him — the same ones that came here— would he have killed himself rather than give them the money?"
Berri shrugged. "Maybe. Or maybe they threatened his daughter like they threatened to kill all my foxes. He loved her — I know that. He'd have done anything for her."
"But that's arguing the other way. The simplest way to protect her would have been to hand over the money. Yet he didn't."
He shrugged again. "Harry could be a stubborn son of a bitch… Or maybe it's the police. Why believe them? They could have been fooled. They could have made it look like he killed himself."
Which was what I was wondering about. Up to this point, not understanding its motive, the suicide had seemed convincing enough. But if Brightman could simply have given them the money — if there'd been such an easy way out — why would he have put himself and May through the horror? On the other hand, Subotin wouldn't have wanted Brightman dead — not before he'd told him where the gold was located. But maybe it didn't make that much difference. One way or the other, Harry Brightman was dead.
I said, "All right, forget about that. There's something else
I still don't get. This hold Harry had on the Bolshevik… did it have anything to do with the child?"
He shrugged. Sipped. Then shook his head with impatience. "I don't know. Maybe. Who does know? You've got all that on the brain."
"But there was a child, Mr. Bern. There's no doubt about that. And I'm sure it came out of Russia at the same time Dimitrov made his trip here."
"Well, I'll tell you one thing. Don't kid yourself. Once upon a time, Dimitrov might have been your hero, but he ended up like the rest of them, a son of a bitch. By 1940, his hands were covered in blood. If he snatched a baby away from the Bolshevik, it was because he thought it might help save him, not the child."
I waited, but he turned back to his cup. I thought for a moment — his idea at least had the virtue of novelty. But was it really possible that a child had protected Dimitrov, and that this protection had then been passed on to Brightman? In 1940, everyone seemed to agree, Dimitrov had been living under a genuine threat: many of his friends were dead, and his policies had all been discredited. Yet, despite this threat, it was a simple historical fact that he had survived. So the question Leonard Forbes had asked now came back into my mind: Who really knows why any of them were killed, or why any of them escaped? More than likely Dimitrov survived through blind luck. But maybe he hadn't; maybe… I leaned back in my chair. It was all too vague; and maybe, in the end, Berri was right — he'd been right more than anyone else, after all — and the child really had no importance. Taking another sip of the old man's whiskey, I moved back to firmer ground. "One last point," I said, "about the money. You said he kept it in gold, in gold certificates. Do you know when he bought them? I don't mean exactly, but do you know if he bought them before 1970?"
He shrugged. "Long before that. What the hell difference does the year make?"
A great deal, I knew; but if he didn't understand, that was all right. Spilling a little more whiskey into his cup, I went into the living room.
I'd spread every paper I'd been able to find on the floor, and now they were stained with soft black blots of the dead fox's blood. But I found what I wanted, the print on the page glistening like a reflection on a black lacquer table: a Montreal Gazette from a week ago, the box on the stock-market page which showed the commodity prices.
I kneeled down, took out my pen, worked it all out in the margin.
It was simple enough. Before August 15, 1971, the U.S. Treasury had bought and sold gold at $35 an ounce. That was the price at which Harry Brightman must have bought his, and for $800,000 he would have received certificates equivalent to almost twenty-three thousand ounces. But after 1971, when the price of gold had been left to the free market, that value had soared. According to the Gazette, the price in London three days before had been around $500 an ounce — which meant that Brightman's certificates were now worth between eleven and twelve million dollars.
Kneeling in that living room, I stared at this figure for a long, long time. It explained a great deal. More than what I'd discovered about Dimitrov, far more than what I'd found out about May's adoption. Here was the past — Brightman's past — erupting into the present. Here were the motives for his disappearance, his suicide, and Travin's murder. But then I thought about May… had she known what was happening? If I could call her now, what would she say? Had she told Cadogan to stop me from going on precisely because she knew what I'd find? But then why point me down this trail in the first place?
Questions — to which I still didn't have answers. But then there was Berri's solution — that none of them made any difference, that they were merely an obsession, something I had on the brain. As I stared down at my figuring, he seemed to be right. May, Dimitrov, Grainger, Florence Raines — perhaps I was holding on to them like a scientist, in love with his theories, who's now been presented with fresh, contradictory evidence. I simply didn't like to admit that everything now pointed in a different direction. To Brightman as a spy, not a father; to Paris today, not Halifax long ago.
But what did this have to do with me? Here was the last, crucial question. I'd told Hamilton I'd go to France, and I felt I had no choice about that, even if it left me dead broke. Having come this far, there was no doubt that I'd go on to the end. But was there some inner, hidden logic driving me on? Paris… my mother's city. Paris: where my parents had met. It was truly uncanny. Each step I took into Brightman's past only seemed to carry me deeper into my own, and now, as I crouched in Berri's blood-spattered living room, Travin's words drifted back through my mind: I'll tell you something personal, Mr. Thome, something you wouldn't want a policeman to hear… Maybe, I thought, I already knew what this was. The truth was there, at the tip of my tongue, in the corner of my eye — but I was too afraid to let myself say it or see it.
Maybe.
On the other hand, there was Berri's solution: all these vague questions were merely problems I had on the brain.
$12,000,000…
For most people, that was reason enough to do anything. It was reason enough for Subotin, I thought, and it would do for me too. What did he want with that money? Why was he prepared to kill and maim for it? I had no idea, but I knew I didn't want him to have it. Whatever side he was on — or Berri, or Brightman, or even my father — my side was different.
But then, erasing these thoughts from my mind, the foxes once more took up their lament, a melancholy cry that sent a shiver up my spine. Stock-still, I listened. Their howls rose and fell in rough, pitiful harmony, like a banshee's cry that has come too late, or a ghost's agonized call to its own lost soul — the Red Fox was dead, but perhaps his shade, disturbed by this night, was restlessly moving through the forest nearby.