And I wondered at that moment whether it might all be fading away to nothing.
“Ben?” I suddenly heard Molly say.
“Yes?”
She looked at me curiously. “He says we can get into the box now if we’d like. All I have to do is fill out a form.”
“Then let’s do it now,” I said, knowing she was trying to divine my intentions. If you had the power, Mol, you wouldn’t have to ask, I thought.
The banker took from a drawer a two-page form evidently designed for one purpose alone: intimidation. When she had filled out the form, he glanced it over, pursed his lips, then got up and consulted an older man, probably his superior. A few minutes later he returned, and with a nod he led us into an interior room lined with tarnished brass compartments that ranged from about four inches square to roughly three times that. He inserted his key in one of the smaller boxes.
He pulled the brass-fronted box from its slot and carried it to a nearby private conference room, where he placed it on a table, explaining to us that the French system required two keys to open a safe-deposit box: one belonging to the client, and the other to the bank. With a curt smile and a perfunctory nod, he left us alone in the room.
“Well?” I said.
Molly shook her head, a little gesture that conveyed so much-apprehension, relief, wonderment, frustration-and inserted in the second lock the tiny key that her father had hidden in the binding of Allen Dulles’s memoirs. Harrison Sinclair, rest in peace, never lacked a sense of irony.
The brass plate at the front of the box popped open with a tiny click. Molly reached her hand inside.
My breath caught for an instant. I watched her intently. I said, “Empty?”
After a few seconds she shook her head.
I let out my breath.
She pulled out from the safe-deposit box’s dark recesses a long gray envelope measuring perhaps nine inches by four inches. Quizzically, she tore open the envelope and pulled out its contents: a typewritten note, a yellowed scrap of a business envelope, and a small black-and-white glossy photograph. A moment later I heard her sharp intake of air. “Oh, dear God,” she said. “Dear God.”
FIFTY-SIX
I stared at the photograph that had so taken her aback. It was the most ordinary-looking snapshot taken from a family album: three inches by four, 1950s scalloped edges, even a crusty brown spot of dried mucilage on the back. A lanky, athletic-looking, handsome man stood arm in arm with a dark-haired, dark-eyed young beauty; in front of them, grinning mischievously, was a tomboyish little girl of three or four, twinkling light eyes, her dark hair cut in perfect bangs and tied in loose braids on either side.
The three of them were standing on the worn wooden steps of a large wooden house or a lodge, from the looks of it; the sort of ramshackle, comfortable summer house you might find on Lake Michigan or Lake Superior or in the Poconos or the Adirondacks, or on the banks of any rustic lake in any part of the country.
The little girl-Molly; there was no question about it-was a blur of hyperactivity, her image just barely captured by the wink of an aperture, for one sixty-fourth of a second or whatever it was. Her parents looked both proud and comfortable: a heart-melting family tableau that was so all-American, it was almost kitsch.
“I remember that place,” Molly said.
“Hmm?”
“I mean, I don’t actually remember much about it, but I remember hearing about it. It was my grandmother’s place in Canada somewhere-my mother’s mother. Her old house on some lake.” She fell silent, continued staring at the photo, probably culling the details: an Adirondack chair on the porch behind them, missing one slat; the large, uneven stones that made up the front of the rough-hewn house; her father’s seersucker jacket and bow tie; her mother’s prim floral summer dress; the India rubber ball and baseball glove lying on the steps beside them.
“How odd,” she said. “Sort of a happy memory. Anyway, the place isn’t ours anymore. Unfortunately. My parents sold it when I was still little, I think. We never went there again, except that one summer.”
I picked up the scrap of envelope, which bore an address or a portion of an address in a spidery European scrawclass="underline" 7, rue du Cygne, ler, 23. Paris, clearly, but what was it? Why here, locked away in a vault?
And why the photograph? A signal, a message to Molly from her late father-from (you’ll pardon the triteness) beyond the grave?
And I picked up the letter, which had been composed on some ancient manual typewriter and was rife with cross-outs and typos, and was for some reason addressed “To My Beloved Snoops.”
I looked up at Molly, about to ask what the hell that salutation was all about, when she smiled sheepishly and explained: “Snoops was his pet name for me.”
“Snoops?”
“For Snoopy. My favorite cartoon character when I was a kid.”
“Snoopy.”
“And… and also because I liked to open locked drawers when I was a little girl. Look into things that were deemed none of my business. Stuff that all little kids do, but if your father was CIA station chief in Cairo, or deputy director of Plans, or whatever he was, you get chided a little too much for your curiosity. Curiosity killed the cat, and all that. So he used to call me Snoopy, and then Snoops.”
“Snoops,” I said, trying it out impishly.
“Don’t you dare, Ellison. You hear me? Don’t you fucking dare.”
I turned back to the letter, so badly typed on creamy Crane’s ecru stock, under the Harrison Sinclair letterhead, and began to read:
TO MY BELOVED SNOOPS:
If you’re reading this-and of course you’re reading this, else these words will never be read-let me first express, for the millionth time, my admiration. You are a wonderful doctor, but you’d also have made a first-class spy if only you didn’t have such disdain for my chosen profession. But I don’t mean by that any hostility: in some ways you were right to take such a dislike to the intelligence trade. There is much in it that’s objectionable. I just hope someday you come to appreciate what’s noble in it, too-and not out of some sense of filial obligation or loyalty or guilt. When your mother’s cancer had progressed to the point that it was clear she wouldn’t be around for more than a few weeks, she sat me down in her hospital room-no one could hold court like your mother-and told me, with a wag of her index finger, that I should never interfere in the way you choose to live your life. She said you would never follow the conventional patterns, but in the end, wherever you wound up, no one would have a more level head, a firmer grasp on reality, a better perspective, than “dear Martha.” So I trust you’ll understand what I’m about to tell you.
For reasons that will soon become apparent, there’s no record of this box among my papers, in my Last Will and Testament, or any other place. In order to have found this note, you’ll have found the key I left (sometimes the simplest and most old-fashioned ways are the best) and also have gotten into the vault in Zurich.
Which means that you have found the gold, which I’m sure you’ll agree requires some explanation.
I’ve never much liked chases and hunts, so please believe that my intention was not to make things difficult for you-but to make things difficult for anyone else. Nothing in this game is foolproof, but if you’ve gotten this far, you’ll understand why I’ve done this. Everything is for your protection.