“My cigarettes are soaked,” Ari said.
David Ben Ami passed him a pack. A brief flame glowed over the face of the man who was called Ari. He was large and husky, in complete contrast to the small Ben Ami. His face was handsome but there was a set hardness in his eyes.
He was Ari Ben Canaan and he was the crack agent of the Mossad Aliyah Bet-the illegal organization.
CHAPTER THREE: There was a knock on Mark Parker’s door. He opened it. Katherine Fremont stood before him. She was even more beautiful than he remembered. They stared at each other silently for a long time. He studied her face and her eyes. She was a woman now, soft and compassionate in the way one gets only through terrible suffering.
“I ought to break your damned neck for not answering my letters,” Mark said.
“Hello, Mark,” she whispered.
They fell into each other’s arms and clung to each other. Then for the first hour they spoke little but contented themselves with looking at each other, with quick smiles, occasional pressing of hands, and affectionate kisses on the cheek.
At dinner they made small talk, mostly of Mark’s adventures as a foreign correspondent. Then Mark became aware that Kitty was steering all the conversation away from any talk of herself.
The final dish of cheeses came. Mark poured the last of his Keo beer and another of the many awkward silent periods followed. Now Kitty was obviously growing uncomfortable under his questioning stare.
“Come on,” he said, “let’s take a walk to the harbor.”
“I’ll get my stole,” she said.
They walked silently along the quay lined with white buildings and onto the sea wall and out to the lighthouse which stood at the narrow opening of the harbor. It was cloudy and they could see but dim outlines of the little boats resting at anchor. They watched the lighthouse blink out to sea, guiding a trawler toward the shelter of the harbor. A soft wind blew through Kitty’s golden hair. She tightened the stole over her shoulders. Mark lit a cigarette and sat on the wall. It was deathly still.
“I’ve made you very unhappy by coming here,” he said, “I’ll leave tomorrow.”
“I don’t want you to go,” she said. She looked away out to the sea. “I don’t know bow I felt when I received your cable. It opened the door on a lot of memories that I have tried awfully hard to bury. Yet I knew that one day this minute would come … in a way I’ve dreaded it … in a way, I’m glad it’s here.”
“It’s been four years since Tom got killed. Aren’t you ever going to shake this?”
“Women lose husbands in war,” she whispered. “I cried for Tom. We were very much in love, but I knew I would go on living. I don’t even know how he died.”
“There wasn’t much to it,” Mark said. “Tom was a marine and he went in to take a beach with ten thousand other marines. A bullet hit him and he died. No hero, no medals … no time to say, ‘tell Kitty I love her.’ Just got hit by a bullet and died … that’s it.”
The blood drained from her face. Mark lit a cigarette and handed it to her. “Why did Sandra die? Why did my baby have to die too?”
“I’m not God. I can’t answer that.”
She sat beside Mark on the sea wall and rested her head on his shoulder and sighed unevenly. “I guess there is no place left for me to run,” she said.
“Why don’t you tell me about it.”
“I can’t…”
“I think it’s about time that you did.”
A half dozen times Kitty tried to speak, but her voice held only short disconnected whispers. The years of terror were locked deep in her. She threw the cigarette into the water and looked at Mark. He was right and he was the only one in the world she could confide in.
“It was pretty terrible,” she said, “when I got the telegram about Tom, I loved him so. Just … just two months after that Sandra died of polio. I … I don’t remember too much. My parents took, me away to Vermont and put me in a home.”
“Asylum?”
“No … that’s the name they give it for poor people … they called mine a rest home for a breakdown. I don’t know how many months passed there. I couldn’t remember everything. I was in a complete fog day and night. Melancholia, they call it.”
Suddenly Kitty’s voice became steady. The door had opened and the torment was finding its way out. “One day the veil over my mind lifted and I remembered that Tom and Sandra were dead. A pain clung to me. Everything every minute of the day reminded me of them. Every time I heard a song, every time I heard laughter … every time I saw a child. Every breath I took hurt me. I prayed … I prayed, Mark, that the fog would fall on me again. Yes, I prayed I’d go insane so I couldn’t remember.”
She stood up tall and straight and the tears streamed down her cheeks. “I ran away to New York. Tried to bury myself in the throngs. I had four walls, a chair, a table, a swinging light bulb.” She let out a short ironic laugh. “There was even a flickering neon sign outside my window. Corny, wasn’t it? I’d walk aimlessly for hours on the streets till all the faces were a blur, or I’d sit and look out of the window for days at a time. Tom, Sandra, Tom, Sandra … it never left me for a moment.”
Kitty felt Mark behind her. His hands gripped her shoulders. Out in the water the trawler was nearing the opening between the arms of the sea wall. She brushed her cheek against Mark’s hand.
“One night I drank too much. You know me … I’m a terrible drinker. I saw a boy in a green uniform like Tom’s. He was lonely and crew-cut and tall … like Tom. We drank together … I woke up in a cheap, dirty hotel room … God knows where. I was still half drunk. I staggered to the mirror and I looked at myself. I was naked. The boy was naked too … sprawled out on the bed.”
“Kitty, for God’s sake…”
“It’s all right, Mark … let me finish. I stood there looking in that mirror … I don’t know how long. I had reached the bottom of my life. There was no place lower for me. That moment… that second I was done. The boy was unconscious … strange … I don’t even remember his name. I saw his razor blades in the bathroom and the gas pipe from the ceiling and for a minute or an hour … I don’t know how long I stood booking down ten stories over the sidewalk. The end of my life had come but I did not have the strength to take it. Then a strange thing happened, Mark. I knew that I was going to go on living without Tom and Sandra and suddenly the pain was gone.”
“Kitty, darling. I wanted so much to find you and help you.”
“I know. But it was something I had to fight out myself, I suppose. I went back to nursing, plunged into it like crazy. The minute it was over in Europe. I took on this Greek orphanage … it was a twenty-four-hour-a-day job. That’s what I needed of course, to work myself to the limit. Mark
… I … I’ve started a hundred letters to you. Somehow I’ve been too terrified of this minute. I’m glad now, I’m glad it’s over.”
“I’m glad I found you,” Mark said.
She spun around and faced him. “… so that is the story of what has become of Kitty Fremont.”
Mark took her hand and they began walking back along the sea wall to the quay. From the Dome Hotel they could hear the sound of music.
CHAPTER FOUR: Brigadier Bruce Sutherland sat behind a big desk as military commander of Cyprus in his house on Hippocrates Street in Famagusta, some forty miles from Kyrenia. Except for small telltale traces-a slight roll around his middle and a whitening of the hair about his temples-Sutherland’s appearance belied his fifty-five years. His ramrod posture clearly identified a military man. A sharp knock sounded on the door and his aide, Major Fred Caldwell, entered.
“Good evening, Caldwell. Back from Kyrenia already? Have a chair.” Sutherland shoved the papers aside, stretched, and put his glasses on the desk. He selected a GBD pipe from the rack and dipped it into a humidor of Dunhill mix. Caldwell thanked the brigadier for a cigar and the two men soon clouded the room in smoke. The Greek houseboy appeared in answer to a buzz.