Cut and Run (26 page)

Now, finally, she brushed away her tears, wishing her mother could be here with her. Catharina was nearing sixty herself. She was older than her mother had lived to be. And yet she wanted that stern, loving guidance, that soft lap, that strong shoulder on which to cry.

“You mustn't blame yourself, dear Catharina…”

“Oh, Mamma,” she cried aloud, paralyzed with fear and indecision. Ever since her talk with Wilhelmina, she'd hidden herself away, looking for answers out the window, in the winter sky and the gray buildings and the Christmas trimmings. There were none. “If only you were here, Mamma, to tell me what to do!”

Drying her tears, she turned away from the window. She had a vision of her tiny daughter in pigtails and dirty sneakers, climbing up onto the piano bench, and she wanted to transport herself back in time and take that child in her arms and hold her, just hold her.

You must be strong, Catharina,
she could hear her mother say.
You must be strong.

She went into the library, where Adrian was sitting up late with a book. “Adrian,” she said, maintaining a deliberate air of nonchalance. Her stomach was tight, aching, hollow. “Adrian—has Juliana ever come to you about opening a safe-deposit box?”

He looked at her, his handsome face filled with tenderness as he studied her. He had to see how upset she was. But he hadn't pressed her about the terrible tension that had gripped her since their daughter's last Lincoln Center performance. It wasn't that he didn't care or that he didn't want to know. Many times in the past he'd told her he wanted to know everything about her—everything she cared to tell him. But he'd also explained that he understood she was an intensely private woman, respected that, and had come to accept that there was a part of her he could never know. He blamed her family, the war. She'd been so young—old enough to remember, young enough not really to understand.

“Is she interested in getting one?” he asked, still watching her.

Catharina lifted her shoulders, her neck muscles crunching with the movement because they were so tense. Her carefree existence had spoiled her. She had her husband, her child, food, shelter, clothing. For so long she'd wanted for nothing.

“She has so many valuables,” she said lamely. “I was just wondering. Perhaps it's something she should look into.”

Adrian sighed, and she could see the resignation in his eyes: he wasn't going to get an explanation tonight, either. “I'll talk to her about it, if you'd like.”

“Please.”

“Are you going to bed?” he asked.

It was another way of asking if she thought she'd sleep tonight; she hadn't since Rachel's visit. Adrian had tried to comfort her, but even after they made love she would lie awake, staring at the ceiling.

“In a little while,” she said, hearing the love in her voice, a love that went deeper than words—that could ignore half-truths. But her mind was racing.
If Juliana has the Minstrel, what will she do? What will I do?

Yes, Mamma, I know, she thought; I must be strong.

 

Juliana had been unable to return to her trancelike state after Matthew's call and had abandoned the piano. She was staring at the magnificent skyline, debating once more whether to tell anyone about the Minstrel's Rough, when Aunt Willie stormed in, muttering in Dutch.

“Are you all right?” Juliana asked, climbing up from the couch.

“Of course. I was followed, but no matter. Do you have any binoculars?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. I usually keep them at my house in Vermont, for bird watching, but I can't identify many birds, just the usual sparrows and—”

Aunt Willie hissed impatiently. “Will you get them?”

“Why?”

“Achh!”

“All right, all right.”

She dug them out of a drawer in the library and returned to the living room, where Aunt Willie was peering down at Central Park West, her face pressed up against the window. “I know I saw him,” she said.

Juliana handed her the binoculars. “Who?”

“Hendrik de Geer.” Wilhelmina looked through the binoculars only briefly, handing them back in disgust. “As I thought, he's gone.”

“He was out there? But why—”

“He has his reasons, I'm sure. He always does.”

“Aunt Willie, I'd like to know more about him. He betrayed you and Mother during the war, but how? What exactly did he do? Why's he here now? Dammit, if he's hanging around outside my window—”

“I'm tired,” Wilhelmina said, yawning. “I'm going to bed. I suggest you do, too. You'll want an early start for Washington in the morning.”

Juliana groaned, but she didn't say a word. Dealing with Matthew Stark couldn't be any worse than dealing with Wilhelmina Peperkamp.

 

After Stark's intrusion, Ryder forced himself to calm down. Sweat matted his shirt to his back and lined his face and armpits. He felt himself shaking as the old indecisiveness returned.
My God, does Stark know everything?
Ryder's breathing was rapid and light, but slowly, with practiced self-denial, he pulled himself together and headed upstairs, where he showered off the sweat and the stink of his fear. Stark's visit, he tried to tell himself, meant nothing.

He felt better when he put on his flannel robe and went down to his study. He got out a bottle of scotch and sat in front of his marble fireplace. Drinking and watching the fire die, his mind drifted back twenty years.
Had it been that long?
Every moment of that horrible, tragic day seemed so vivid to him, still so very real. When he swallowed, he could taste the same sourness he'd tasted when he'd first realized the Huey he'd permitted to fly into a hot LZ was going down.

He remembered thinking that he didn't have to worry: Matt Stark was the pilot. Steelman had one month left on his harrowing year-long tour and had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. The grunts felt secure when he was flying their slick.

This mission should have been easy and safe: the resupply of a platoon—First Lieutenant Samuel Ryder's platoon—in a cold LZ. What could happen? But the landing zone had turned hot and no one had told Stark until it was too late—and they were shot down.

“No one's fault,” Ryder mumbled aloud in the silent study. “It was war. Anything could have happened.”

Although he was the officer in charge, Ryder had been too dazed and terrified at first by what was going on to notice even that the Huey was receiving ground fire. The slick went down.

There was nothing even Matthew Stark could do.

Ryder remembered screams—heard them still in his nightmares. Too late, he'd rushed toward the downed slick…and he still could feel the icy grip of Otis Raymond as the door gunner had pushed him aside so a lieutenant wouldn't get torn to bits by AK-47 bullets.

The survivors were picked up by a search and rescue team and taken back to base camp. As a platoon leader, Ryder had faced the Viet Cong and the NVA, but he'd never been so afraid for his life as at the moment when he'd had to face Matt Stark. But the Steelman, his young, knowing face showing no emotion, had only looked at Ryder with those black eyes and not said a word.

With commanding officers buzzing around him demanding to know what the
hell
had happened out there, Stark hadn't made excuses or assigned blame to anyone other than himself. He accepted responsibility for his ship and its passengers.
He
had been in the pilot's seat, no one else.

“We got shot at,” he said. “There's a war going on out there, you know.”

The event, however, had scarred him as much as anyone, and as far as Ryder was concerned, Stark's actions proved it. He didn't go home a month later, but extended and got himself transferred—to Cobras for a while and then to a scout helicopter—the Hughes OH-6A Cayuse or Loach. He was assigned to a hunter-killer or “pink” team, with its primitive, effective strategy. The Loach—the hunter—would go in and draw fire to locate the enemy. Then the killer—the new Bell AH-1G Cobra or “snake”—would come in with guns blazing. The work, especially for the hunters, was dangerous; scout losses were huge. But they didn't carry passengers, and CW-2 Matthew Stark and SP-4 Otis Raymond, who'd stayed with his hero Steelman, had survived.

Sam Ryder, back home in Florida, had hoped they wouldn't.

Now, pouring himself another glass of Scotch, he put them out of his mind, his ability to repress well developed. He had to forget Steelman and Weasel; he had to make himself unavailable to Phillip Bloch. Regardless of what Matthew knew or didn't know, he had no proof—nothing he could print. And he'd have to be very, very careful before he printed anything about Sam Ryder; there was history between them. Stark wouldn't want to be accused of mounting a witch hunt.

Nothing had to happen. All Ryder needed was for Bloch to get hold of the Minstrel's Rough. Then, at last, he'd be satisfied and get out of Ryder's life.

Bloch had to get hold of the Minstrel.

But what will he do to get it? You gave him the names of the Peperkamps. He can find them. He can find Juliana.

“Juliana.”

Her name came out as a breath. Why couldn't he stop thinking about her? She couldn't be involved with this mess; she could have nothing to do with the Minstrel. Bloch had no reason to go after her.

Unless he has reason to believe she has the stone. He won't be satisfied until he's positive she doesn't. Until he knows none of the Peperkamp women has the Minstrel, including Juliana.

Ryder inhaled deeply, then slowly swallowed a mouthful of Scotch. He had to hope Bloch would go to the mother and the aunt first and one of them would lead him to the Minstrel.

Besides, what Bloch did or didn't do was not Sam Ryder's responsibility.

He poured himself another glass of Scotch and took it to bed.

C
atharina set her plastic bucket down hard on the sidewalk in front of her bakeshop. Hot soapy water splashed out onto her sneakers, but she paid no attention. It was early, just after dawn, and cold. She dropped her scrub brush into the bucket and knelt down, her heavy corduroy pants worn at the knee from this very ritual. Every other morning she scrubbed the sidewalk from the door of her shop out to the curb. It was an old Dutch custom. Adrian and Juliana teased her about having the cleanest patch of sidewalk in New York. Twice she'd almost been arrested for her odd activity. Yet Catharina was convinced a clean sidewalk helped business. And even if there was no financial gain to be made from her efforts, New York was never so quiet as it was in early morning. She could think then. Dream. Remember.

But this morning she worked quickly because it was cold and furiously because she was trying so desperately not to think, not to dream, not to remember. Rachel…Senator Ryder…Juliana…Wilhelmina…
Johannes.
My God, what was happening to her world?

Again…

Despite the cold and the ungodly hour, the man was out there, across the street, watching, not caring that she knew he was there. He was young, dark, and fine-featured, not very tall, and he wore clothes that didn't make him stand out in the upper-income neighborhood. This morning's outfit was a pair of heavy corduroy pants and a lambskin jacket. Nevertheless he looked tired and uncomfortable, and she'd thought, madly, of walking over to him and inviting him inside for coffee. But she remembered how young and innocent so many of the Nazis, Dutch as well as German, had looked, and she stopped herself.

Behind her, she heard a soft, distinctive laugh, and she paused, thinking she must have imagined it. It was a laugh of dreams and memories and a girlhood so short, so long ago, that every moment of it was etched in her mind, that much sharper, that much more bittersweet.

Hendrik…

Then the laugh came again, and Catharina tossed the brush into her bucket and rolled back onto her heels. She started to tuck a stray white-blond hair behind her ear but remembered her heavy rubber gloves, her hands warm inside them. Her nose felt cold and red. But as she looked up into the warm blue eyes of Hendrik de Geer, the years fell away. She saw none of his deep wrinkles, none of the scars the years had left, saw only the dashing, brave young man he had once been, at least to her.

“Aren't you ever afraid?”
she asked him.

“Only for you, sweet Catharina,” he'd told her, and she'd believed him.

“You're amazingly clean,” he said now in English, “even for a Dutchwoman.”

“It's my mother's influence.” Her voice was hoarse and unnatural from the tension and an overwhelming sadness, not for the past that had been, but for the past that might have been. She spoke, too, in English. It helped to anchor her in the present. “Mother was always so busy with the Underground Resistance, you remember? I was the youngest, and so I kept house. I wasn't very good at it, but Mother was an exacting woman and I learned quickly. If she found a loose button on a shirt, she would tear off all the other buttons, too, and I would have to sew them all back on.”

Hendrik laughed again, and this time she could see how his eyes crinkled up at the corners. “She always reminded me of Wilhelmina.”

Wilhelmina and their mother. Yes, they were alike, tough-minded and cynical, unwilling to give anyone the benefit of the doubt but, in their own way, loving. Realists, they called themselves. Perhaps it was so. They had guessed what Hendrik was long before anyone else.

Catharina started to her feet, the spell broken. Hendrik de Geer had never been dashing or brave, and her girlhood was long lost. She stumbled because she was stiff from kneeling and not so young anymore, and because Hendrik was there and hadn't been in such a long, long time. From the moment she'd spotted him at Lincoln Center, she'd guessed he would come, eventually. Perhaps she'd even wished it.

He grabbed her arm and helped her up, and she stood close to him as the wind gusted down the wide empty avenue. She felt lightheaded and for no reason at all thought of the cinnamon rolls she'd planned to make that morning, an old, comfortable recipe, and wondered if she'd ever get to them.

“What are you doing here?” she asked softly.

He smiled, his hand lingering on her arm. Through her old, heavy fisherman's sweater, she could feel the imprint of his thick fingers. He'd always been so solid. So strong. Even now, almost seventy, wearing his watch cap and old peacoat, he looked so very handsome and reliable. If only she didn't know better.

He said, “I wanted to see you.”

“Yes.” She looked away, at nothing. “Rachel…”

“I'm sorry she's gone.”

“You knew she was after you.”

He nodded, although she'd needed no confirmation. “Rachel wanted vengeance, Catharina.”

“No, Hendrik.” She pulled away from him, and his hand fell awkwardly to his side. “She wanted justice.”

He looked pained. “I did what I had to do in Amsterdam, to save you—”

“To save yourself! I won't live with that guilt, Hendrik.” But she did, every day.

“They were difficult times, Catharina,” he said as if to a child. “The past is done.”

“The past isn't over, not for any of us. It never will be, Hendrik.” Her eyes were fierce and unforgiving. “Did you kill Rachel?”

“No!” He seemed so appalled, as if he'd never contemplated such a wrong. “No, Catharina. I couldn't.”

“Not even to save yourself?” she asked with contempt, but then fatigue crept in—and sorrow. “Oh, Hendrik, just go away. Disappear as you did before.”

He was shaking his head. “I've already tried. It's what my mind tells me I should do, but my heart tells me otherwise. Catharina, the people I'm involved with have found out about the Minstrel's Rough. They want it, and they'll stop at nothing to get it. Believe me, my dear, I know these men.” He paused, his eyes as soft as they could ever be in a man who'd lived such a cold, hard life. “Let me take you away until I can satisfy them that the Minstrel doesn't exist.”

Catharina blinked rapidly, over and over, but the tears flowed anyway, whipped from her eyes by the wind. She tried to brush them away but remembered the gloves and peeled them off, letting them drop onto the sidewalk. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably. My God, she thought, will they never stop? It seemed they'd been shaking since Rachel had walked into her bakeshop after forty years.

The Minstrel's Rough…damn that horrible stone!

“No,” she said at last, in a choked whisper. “You're not going to save me and let others suffer. I won't let you!”

“I can save everyone.”

She scoffed, sobbing. “As you did in Amsterdam?”

“Catharina, listen to me. Nothing will happen to you or your daughter—or to Wilhelmina. I promise you.”

“And Johannes? You took him to Amsterdam, didn't you? You tried to make him give you that damned diamond. Hendrik, Hendrik, you never change.”

“His heart was no good. There was nothing I could do.” He took her hands and held them tightly, and she was surprised his were so warm. “You don't believe me.”

“Hendrik, please.” Her voice caught, and she was angry with herself for her tears, for thinking, hoping, he'd changed—for wanting to believe they both could pretend Amsterdam had never happened. “I can never believe you again.”

He looked wounded, and yet at the same time not surprised, almost welcoming the blow. Then the earnestness, the frustrating, endearing, appalling optimism, the unshakable belief in himself, took over. “I can stop this, Catharina. If you tell me where the Minstrel is—”

“No!”
She pounded him once on the chest with her fist. “Damn you, Hendrik, no! Even if I knew I'd never tell you. The Minstrel died with Johannes. Now go—for the love of God, Hendrik go.”

“Catharina…”

She shook her head and resisted the impulse to run. Willie wouldn't; their mother wouldn't. And she had to protect Juliana. Catharina made herself look at him, into the eyes that had never told anything that was true. “Understand me, Hendrik; leave my daughter out of whatever trouble you're in this time. If you touch Juliana—if
anyone
connected with you touches her—there's nowhere you can go, nowhere you can hide that I won't find you. If you should die before I do, you'll see me in hell.”

Hendrik swallowed and licked his chapped lips, and he whispered, “Don't hate me, sweet Catharina.”

“I don't, Hendrik,” she said, so tired. “I never did.”

She pushed past him, knocking over the bucket as she ran inside and shut the door hard behind her, clicking shut the deadbolt lock. The sound echoed in the quiet shop.

Hendrik de Geer stood in the dirty water, and he looked without expression toward the shop. Catharina warned herself that he was the same thoughtless, selfish coward he had been in Amsterdam. How could she feel any pity for him after what he'd done?
Nothing
had changed. Not Hendrik, not herself, not their past.

She watched him through the window. He bent over, righting the bucket, and picked up one of her rubber gloves. He pressed it to his lips. Catharina bit back a cry as he walked over and hung the glove on the doorknob.

He said nothing, and then he walked off slowly down Madison Avenue, alone.

 

Juliana had changed into J.J. Pepper to keep herself from being followed to LaGuardia Airport and then changed back into herself in the
Gazette
ladies' room, leaving J.J.'s clothes in a paper bag under the sink. Then she proceeded to the newsroom. She was dressed in a chocolate wool gabardine suit with a Hermès scarf at her neck and her hair pulled back. She thought she looked distinctive, if not brass tacks. A reporter pointed out Matthew's desk, which was as yet unoccupied. She went over and sat on the straight-backed chair next to it, glancing at the notes and papers on his desk. She saw the obituaries on Rachel Stein and her uncle and felt her expression turn grim.

A tall woman with dark horn-rimmed glasses came over and asked if she could help her. Juliana introduced herself. “I'm Alice Feldon,” the editor said, eyeing her. “So you're Stark's piano player.”

Juliana winced. “When's he due in?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“It's very important I see him. I—I have new information for him; I'm sure he'll want to know.”

“Don't count on it.” She picked up a scrap of paper and a pencil, jotted down something, and handed both back to Juliana. “That's his home number and his address. You decide what you want to do.”

Alice Feldon marched back to her desk, and Juliana picked up the phone but stopped herself from dialing. If Matthew answered, what would she tell him?
I was just wondering when you were coming in to your office.
He'd ask why; she'd tell him because she was there waiting for him. He'd tell her, “Then wait, goddamnit.”

She tucked the scrawled address in her pocket and called for a cab.

 

With one of his men posted on the street, Phillip Bloch grinned at his former platoon leader from the front stoop of his elegant townhouse. “Morning, Sam.”

“Bloch—
what are you doing here?
” Ryder went pale. “I thought we had an understanding that you would never come to Washington. For God's sake, get inside quickly.”

“Calm down, Sam.” Bloch entered the quiet foyer. He had a plastic container of fresh fruit salad in one hand, and with a plastic fork, he stuck a hung of cantaloupe into his mouth. At one time he'd smoked cigarettes incessantly. Now he received his oral gratification from various fruits and seeds. Sometimes he felt like a goddamn squirrel. He went on pleasantly, “I love D.C. Christ, I could buy a whole case of melons for what I pay for one stinking salad here.”

Ryder bristled. “We can talk in the study, but I hardly think we should prolong this meeting, Sergeant.”

“That's okay by me.”

Bloch followed the senator into the study at the back of the house, passing an elegant dining room done in Queen Anne. The sergeant knew it was Queen Anne because for years his mother had kept a picture of a dining set—an Ethan Allen reproduction—taped on the refrigerator. It was what she wanted some day for her dining room, which was pretty much a wreck. Nobody in their household could afford it or even gave two shits whether or not she ever got it. Losers, his mother had called them; you're all a bunch of losers. She was an old lady now, but she probably still had that goddamn picture on her refrigerator.

The study didn't remind Bloch of anything he'd ever known, except maybe a whorehouse or two. Oriental carpet on the hardwood floor, cherry from the looks of it, leather club chairs and sofa, brass lamps, masculine ornaments, paintings of horses. A framed picture of Sammy as a decorated first lieutenant in the U.S. Army stood on an antique secretary, but about the only thing he'd done that entitled him to be decorated, in Bloch's estimation, was not getting any more people killed than he had. The frame, the sergeant noted, was silver, probably sterling.