Cloak of Darkness (13 page)

“Only too well. When will you be ready to send your report?”

“Give me an hour.” He’d need all of that. The arm was throbbing, that damned shoulder hurt more than he had expected, and his mind was stunned.

“An hour,” Aristophanes said as he left the room. Claudel drew the scrap of paper from his pocket, lifted the pencil, and began to make the changes.

“The first entry now became: Erik—was in Djibouti, most possibly now stowed away on SS
Spaarndam
sailing toward Suez, aided by early sympathiser (Berlin origin; false British passport in name William Haversfield) travelling as passenger same ship. Means of escape from Djibouti: murder.

The sixth entry was expanded. Duhamel—port security, co-operated fully, help invaluable, killed tonight in suspicious circumstances.

Claudel began to encode the report for Gilman in London. (Bob Renwick would hear the details in New York.) At the sixth entry, he paused. His eyes blurred. He closed them, passed his hand over his brow. What about Duhamel’s wife? She was coming out here in November. In time for Christmas, Georges had said.

Claudel picked up the pencil, finished his task. He added a postscript: Leaving tomorrow.

“It’s always fantastic,” Nina said as she unpacked their travelling clock and set it back five hours before placing it on a night table.

“What is?” Renwick was studying the phone numbers he had copied down from Brimmer’s Minus List.

“We left London at one and we were in New York by three.” Fantastic, too, that she had managed to pack and close the flat in two days. Not bad for a beginner, she told herself. Bob had managed all these meetings at Merriman’s, all the phone calls, all the clearing of his desk in his office, as if he had no more to worry about than keeping a dinner engagement. “How long do we stay at the Stafford?” It was a pleasant hotel, and Ronald Gilman, who used it on his visits to Manhattan, had been able to get them a room. “I mean, do I unpack completely or just for tonight?”

“That depends. Let me put in some phone calls first.” It was now four thirty, he noted. He could catch the Senator and the two business-men before they left their offices. If not there, then he’d try their home addresses. The Minus List, with deadly efficiency, held both sets of numbers.

“I’ll go downstairs and have a cup of coffee.”

“No. I’d rather you stay here, honey. Will you? I won’t be too long.” He kissed her. “Keep that smile in place. And the door locked.” Then he left.

There was a public phone in the lobby. Renwick, weighed down with nickels and dimes, began his calls. The Senator was in Alaska on an ecological study. One business-man was fishing in Nova Scotia but would be home on Tuesday. The other had taken his family for a week in Wyoming.

Duty done, thought Renwick as he ended the three calls. Now he put in a fourth call, but this time it was to a car-rental agency. The week-end was his. Relax, he told himself as he returned to their room. There never was any use worrying about something over which he had no control, and three characters wandering through the wilds of Alaska, Nova Scotia, Wyoming were certainly out of reach. Not just his but Brimmer’s, thank God.

Nina was in the shower, her dress unpacked and ready for this evening—optimist that she was. “Best of news,” he called to her. “We can enjoy the Fourth like everyone else. Keep the water running—I’ll have a shower, too.”

Nina looked around the bathroom door, her hair bound in a towel. “Couldn’t hear you, darling.”

He stripped off the last of his clothes, “I said I’ll have a shower, too.”

“Your telephone calls—”

“All over.”

“And everything is all right?”

“Very much all right,” he told her, catching her around the waist. “Tonight, the town. Tomorrow, ocean breezes.”

All worry banished, she thought, and she hugged him. He pulled away the towel from her head, let the loose flow of golden hair drop over her shoulders.

“I’m in the middle of my shower,” she protested as she kissed him.

“Are you?” he teased. “We’ll turn off the water. There’s a lot of time to put in before dinner.”

***

Next morning, they drove to the far end of Long Island. The rented car performed well, and an early start from New York helped them avoid much of the holiday traffic on the expressways. “Miles of white beaches,” he promised Nina, “and four days of sun. You’ll be a beautiful bronze before Monday arrives.”

“Or a peeling pink. But how on earth did you get a room at an inn for July Fourth week-end?”

“Friends,” Renwick said with a broad smile. He hadn’t felt as good as this in months. Four days with Nina and all problems pushed aside until they were back in New York. Communication with Interintell would be easy—again through a friend, Chet Danford, partner in the law firm to which Frank Cooper had belonged. Cooper was gone, killed two years ago, and could never be replaced, but Danford had stepped into that gap and was now a staunch ally of Interintell. He had bought Cooper’s place on Sixty-first Street in New York, made use of it when he needed a town house, and—above all—kept Cooper’s top-floor room secure. It contained a neat set of communication devices that had always astonished Renwick. Old Frank had been a radio enthusiast since his days with the OSS when his life in Nazi-occupied territory had depended on it.

“Friends?” Nina was asking. Bob seemed to know an amazing number of people in America—more than she did.

“One friend in particular. He has also offered us his house in New York. On Sixty-first Street. It’s convenient.” And safe, Renwick thought as he looked at Nina.

She was wide-eyed with delight. “But how marvellous.”

“Just for a week or so. Until we take off for Washington. That all depends, really, on how my arrangements go.” Such as the return of three marked men from their July vacations. Such as a visit to the New York office of Exports Consolidated.

“I ought to phone Father and warn him we’ll—”

“And have your stepmother start arranging parties for us? No, thank you, darling. Call him when we reach Washington. Time enough.” And let’s hope Francis O’Connell and his Beryl will be miles away on the Maryland shore. Then, feeling he had been too rough, he added, “I have guilt about not seeing my own people. But that will come later—before we go back to London.” And by that time the danger may be over—it will damn well have to be. He glanced at Nina. Horrify her by telling her the truth? Nina, my love, my name is on a death list. All Renwicks are best avoided; all O’Connells, too, until we get a certain matter straightened out. “That’s an attractive spot.” He pointed to a windmill with a shingled house attached, a garden with roses on a white picket fence, large maples and chestnut trees and a bright-green lawn.

“It’s the third house today I’ve wanted to buy.” This part of the world was new to her. Even New York would be mostly strange: a pass-through visit was all she had so far paid it. “Could we ever, do you think?”

“On second thoughts, too much grass cutting, too much leaf raking in the fall.”

“My foot-loose husband. Travel, travel—”

“Listen to that! From the girl I had to chase from Istanbul to Bombay before she’d even kiss me.” He slowed down for the mess of traffic in East Hampton’s Main Street, cars parked every inch of the way, trucks of all sizes mixing with the slow stream of automobiles as thick as clotted cream.

Nina looked around her in dismay. “Don’t tell me they’ve let the main highway run right through their village.”

“Goodbye New England, welcome New York’s clutter.” Including modern construction, new buildings for old. He shook his head as some real inhabitants—you could tell them by their normal dress and stunned expressions—tried to cross the street, far outnumbered by all the brief pants and yards of bare skin that pressed around them. “We’ve another village to pass”—and another Main Street gone the way of all flesh— “and then let’s hope there are still some farms and woodland around. Can’t be shopping centres everywhere.”

Twenty minutes later, once they cut away from the highway and took the old road that edged the ocean, they could leave the procession of cars speeding toward the happy hunting ground for shark and swordfish at Montauk, the last tip of the Island’s long finger that pointed at Europe. At Portugal, actually. “I always forget how far south New York lies from London. If it weren’t for the Gulf Stream, the English Channel could have Labrador’s climate.”

“What, no playing fields at Eton? No swimming, no tennis, no strawberries and cream?” Then Nina became serious. “Nature’s mercies—we don’t think of them much, just take them for granted. Which means we’re ungrateful. Then Nature blows her top, just to remind us: a mountain explodes or the earth cracks open or—Bob, is this hurricane territory?” She looked out at the Atlantic with its perpetual breakers, high-crested even on this hot summer day of blue sky and little breeze, that sent white surf crashing onto the beach below the dunes.

“Later in the year. Don’t worry, my pet. We won’t waken tomorrow with tons of salt water dumped on us and winds of a hundred and twenty-five miles an hour behind them.” He pointed to the small house that stood just ahead of them, built on top of the dunes. Well beyond it, above some thin but determined trees, he could see the spreading roofs of a hotel. “Yes, this must be it.” He drew the car up at the side of the cottage. “Chet Danford said the bed is made up, food is in the refrigerator, and the world is ours. No, to be quite honest. I added the last bit.”

Nina stared at the cottage, stared at him, said, “But I thought—”

“Did I ever say we were going to an inn?” he reminded her and kissed her astonished mouth. “And no more thinking for the next four days, honey.”

“No work at all? No worries, no—”

“Not even a phone call.” He kissed her again, long and hard. “Surprised?”

“By everything,” she said happily, her arms around him. “You’re always surprising me.” From the very beginning— when he had rushed her away from Washington to be married. To London, she had thought, until they were in a plane that was heading for Zurich. And from Zurich to Geneva, where they had first met. “Just an old romantic under this hard-boiled exterior,” he had joked. But there was truth in that jest. Her arms tightened, holding him close.

“Why are we kissing in this damned machine as if we hadn’t a place of our own? Come on, Nina.” He was out of the car, his arm around her waist as she joined him.

“The luggage?”

“Later. No hurry for that.”

She looked at the long stretch of white sand below the dunes, at the breaking waves so clean and cool. She glanced at Bob, wondering if he had read her thoughts. Of course he had. “Later,” she agreed, “we’ll swim later.” And after that, lunch; then sleep and—“Oh, it’s wonderful!” Four days together, no office, no meetings... “I love it.”

“Be it ever so humble,” he said as the front door stuck, its wood swollen with hot weather and sea air, and he had to shoulder it before they could enter. Inside, it was neat and sparkling clean, a simple place for plain living and high thinking: basic wicker furniture and packed bookshelves. But this is one week-end, he thought, when there will be high living and no thinking. For a moment there came flickering into his mind the memory of a list—nine names marked for death. He caught Nina into a tight embrace, holding her close. The memory vanished.

***

The week-end went as they had planned, except for the weather. Torrents of rain on the Fourth of July. “No fireworks,” Nina said when they woke up to the sound of heavy drops sweeping over the roof. No picnic on the shore, watching the distant display of Catherine wheels and rockets bursting into the night sky from a village beach. Renwick took one look at the surge of dark sea and lowered grey clouds. “Back to bed—it’s the warmest place.”

“It’s four o’clock—we’ve slept for hours. Aren’t you hungry?”

“Aren’t you?” he asked, and held out his arms.

She laughed and came away from the window.

On Monday, they drove back to New York. Not even the snaggled traffic and the waiting for mile-long jams to end could dampen Nina’s high spirits. She would have plenty to do, she told him: museums and shops and so many things to see, even two of her old college friends who had come to live in New York.

“No, not yet, Nina.”

Her euphoria vanished. Back to the real world, she thought, and Bob is already deep into it.

“Wait a little, will you? Plenty of time to see them later,” he promised.

“Are we here incognito?”

“That’s one way of describing it.”

“When will I see you? In the evening?”

“As much as possible,” he said vaguely and truthfully.

“We’ll be sleeping together, won’t we?” she asked in alarm.

“That I can promise you,” he said. “And this business in New York may be over quite soon.” How to approach the two business-men, the government contractors who had become suspicious of Mitchell Brimmer and his Exports Consolidated? Phone them, arrange an appointment—yes, that was the first step. But after their experience with Brimmer claiming CIA backing, how would they react to a stranger saying he represented Interintell? Probably wouldn’t believe him, wouldn’t even listen to a warning about a death list with their names on it. Not until they had checked and double-checked Renwick, and that could take time. As for the Senator—he might believe; just might; but not quickly enough, perhaps.

Nina was saying, “Is this the Queensborough Bridge?”

“This is it. Takes us right where we are going. But first, I think we’d better drop the car at its garage. You stay there with the luggage while I find a cab and leave it around the corner from the garage. Then we’ll walk to it. Okay, honey?”

“Really necessary?” She was startled, not so much by the manoeuvre itself but by what it proved to her: there was danger for Bob in this visit to New York. “Is there trouble ahead?”

“Might be,” was all he said. “And I don’t want it to reach out and touch you.”

“Me?” She laughed that off. “Bob”—she was thoughtful now, blue eyes direct and serious, watching every small expression on his face—“why don’t you recruit me? Let me join you.”