They met on the upper floor. Wolfe put his arms around her frail shoulders, held her tightly and walked her down to the parking lot. “What can I expect?” she asked, her voice thickened by emotion. “Will it hold?” “There’s no precedent,” he said, blotting his damp forehead on his bony wrist.” “I know that.”
“So we’ll just have to see. In a few days Barrola will do the plastic surgery. That’s a no-brainer.” “Freddy-”
“Sorry, bad choice of words. Your bonding agent, it worked wonderfully. Now it’s just a matter of time doing its job.” She stared at him without appearing to breathe.” “And will it?” Wolfe took a deep breath, drinking in the look of need and gratitude in Beatrice’s glistening gray eyes. “Beatrice, we’ll have to see.” But between the two of us? I think we have an excellent chance of seeing our Peter smiling back at us in a relatively short while.” He gave her a gentle hug.” Outside the building he ushered her into a waiting Town Car that swiftly bore her away. Then he collapsed into his own, his driver shutting him into the cocoon of air-conditioning and Mahler’s Ninth. He helped himself to an Armagnac from a flask he kept next to his seat, and wondered if he should have offered to spend the night ministering to Beatrice’s state of mind.” It’s what she really wanted, he thought.” Yes, he sighed, surrendering to the sense of triumph percolating through his system-but all in good time.”
After the champagne had been drunk and the brighter lights had been dimmed, the seventy-six-year-old body of Peter Jance, a victim of cancer and age, was bagged along with the ravaged remains of Hans Brinkman’s brain.” The bag was sealed and transported to an incineration unit; within minutes, its contents were reduced to gases and ash.” The former wafted up into the pale azure of the Caribbean sky, the latter were collected and, as ordered, were delivered to Frederick Wolfe personally. The next morning he would deposit them into the first of nine empty stainless steel urns he kept in a locked cabinet in his private quarters. Five miles away. in Vieques’s cafes and bars, nobody was the wiser. The tourists ordered their mai-tais and Heinekens, untroubled by questions of scientific hubris or medical ethics.” The economy was healthy.” The military was unchallenged. Life was good.” What quickly became thought of by the cognoscenti of Wolfe’s inner circle as the rejuvenated Peter was transported to a heavily guarded post-op unit, where the next morning, still sleeping, he was joined by his wife. Once alone with him, Beatrice lay her head on her husband’s chest.” Some part of her knew quite well indeed that it was in fact her husband’s host’s chest, but she kept those thoughts as shut away as Wolfe did his stainless steel urns. She kept herself steady-for him, she told herself.” Peter doesn’t need your doubts.” He needs you to be strong, to project heartfelt encouragement into the mind and spirit now held within that container-as she’d always tried to do in the past.” If she had violated some natural law, or had doomed herself and Peter to some retribution she couldn’t yet dream of-well, it was too late for regrets.” Although she had been silently praying for the past twenty-four hours, she hadn’t the least confidence that there was a God or, if God did exist, that there was any logical reason why she had offended Him or Her or It irrevocably. Nature was full of an implacable desire for survival, and even more filled with eons of experimentation of unfathomable complexity and even more bizarre combinations. And it all seemed without reason. At least she had a reason. She wanted survival for herself and for the man she loved.” All the rest could go to bloody hell.
6
ZURICH
On her way to the restaurant Kronenhalle, Elizabeth found herself crossing the Limmat River on the Quaibrucke, a gently arching stone bridge where she and Hans had once dared to rendezvous, before Yvette’s suspicions had driven them indoors. In the weeks prior to his death, she had lingered here on several occasions, reliving the delicious moment when he had kissed her in front of God and a busload of tourists, several of whom had snapped their picture. Today, as then, swans and ducks plied the clear water, boats bobbed in the marinas of the Zurichsee and, with high gray clouds capping a pale post-rain sky, the air was clear all the way to the snow-peaked mountains. But now her heart was in her throat-the icy wind blowing off the water pierced her to the core. Worse, she knew it wasn’t the cold that was plaguing her: it was a bone-deep fear that was making her shiver so hard her teeth chattered. Spooked, she jogged across the rest of the bridge, turned left and followed Ramistrasse to the address of number 4. Inside, the Kronenhalle was an Art Deco extravagance of carved wood, etched glass and earlytwentieth-century art. Rose-Anne Brinkman was waiting at a back banquette, wearing a floral print dress and a gold turban. The bartender, a pale Italian, was lighting her cigarette. Rose-Anne patted the seat beside her and Elizabeth slipped cautiously into the red booth. “How are you feeling?” the woman asked straight off, looking deeply’ into Elizabeth’s eyes with her quick blue gaze. “I’ve been better,” said Elizabeth warily. “Me, too. Marco,” she called to the bartender, who was watching them in the bar mirror. “Bring the young lady something to warm the pipes-make that two Courvoisiers.” She turned back and got down to business. “Where you from, Elizabeth?” If she hadn’t seen this woman sobbing at the cemetery, she might have thought her incapable of mourning. In the artificial light, she seemed hard as nails. It might be the alcohol or the form her grief was taking-but whatever the cause, Elizabeth reflected, it would make it easier to share her suspicions, which had grown alarmingly since the funeral. Last Sunday, unable to get Hans’s voice or the sound of the broken connection out of her head, she had driven into the Juras to the accident site, and had seen something she couldn’t shake. “Originally? Lansing, Michigan. You?” “Waxahachie, Texas. Married into the Navy, so Pensacola, Guam, Switzerland and Cherry Point, North Carolina came into the picture, too. Oh, and Vieques.” “Vieques?” said Elizabeth. The name rang a faint, haunting bell. “Where’s that?” “Oh, just a little nothing island in the Caribbean. So,” she said, reaching out and tapping Elizabeth on the wrist, “you knew my son. At the sudden gentleness in the woman’s voice, Elizabeth felt her heart lighten, and in the same moment warned herself to be careful. “Through a mutual friend,” she fibbed.
“You were lovers,” Rose-Anne corrected sharply. Elizabeth flushed. “Did Hans say that?” she asked in the calmest Voice she could summon, putting her hands in her lap so the woman couldn’t see them trembling. “Didn’t have to,” she declared. “Plain as the nose on your face. Leave the bottle,” she added to the bartender as he set down their drinks. “But yes, he did talk about you.” It was music to Elizabeth’s ears. “Often?” she ventured. The woman smiled slightly. “Often enough. Never said boo about the others. And you know what I say? Good for you. She lifted her drink, inviting Elizabeth to touch glasses. “He had lots of other women?” Elizabeth asked, putting glass to glass. “Does the Pope wear funny white shoes? Come on, you must’ve known that just from how smooth he was. Drink up. Elizabeth did as she was told. The liquid burned as it traveled down her throat and expanded into a pleasant fireball. Rose-Anne nodded approval. “Myself, I’m drinking more these days,” she said, and swallowed her own in several fast gulps. “Brandy and Patsy Cline, they get me through these nights.” She refilled Elizabeth’s glass. “If it helps you,” Rose-Anne said, “the others meant nothing to him.” “How do you know that?” asked Elizabeth, at once frightened and heartened by the woman’s frankness. She was afraid by how much she wanted to believe her-and yet terrified not to. “Because I asked him.” Rose-Anne laughed. “I’m not shy. Fact is,” she said more carefully, “I was worried about him.” Elizabeth went on alert. “Worried?
“He must have told you about Yvette.”
“A little,” Elizabeth allowed.
“Not that I’m any big fan of affairs,” Rose-Anne said. “I’m from Texas-we shoot women who mess with our men. But they had already bled each other dry. Hans lacked a certain clarity, let’s say, about what was really important in life. Always did run just a little ahead of his headlights.” Elizabeth found herself smiling. “If you mean what I think you mean, he did, didn’t he?” “And his dad and me, we couldn’t help him. He was his own kid always. Well, except for flying, but that came later, after Dave died. After Hans gave up physics.” The woman’s voice was matter-of-fact; Elizabeth felt a chill. “His father isn’t alive?” “You see how close-mouthed he was? Don’t know where he got that trait-didn’t come by it honestly. No, hon, my husband’s dead almost thirty years. SAM missile got him over Hanoi in 1972. No man could’ve done it. Dave could fly circles around a sparrow hawk.” Elizabeth nodded. “Hans loves to fly, too.” “It was the one thing he probably remembered his father talking about. The rest, well, Dave just knew flying. Hans seemed interested in everything, and a lot of it more complicated than either of us could get our brains around.” Elizabeth thought a moment. “Vieques.”