Wars end. Hate lasts for ever.
That phrase of Russell’s came back to her as she opened the car door. Hate kept alive for years had led a man to plant bombs all over a city. Hate had led another man to detonate them. The illusion that she might return to New York in a different mood had faded. She knew that the return journey she would be thinking of the consequences of war and the power it had, after many years, to still claim victims.
CHAPTER 29
When the alarm went off, Vivien did not open her eyes immediately.
She lay in bed, enjoying the touch of the sheets on her body, lethargic after a night of intermittent sleep and no rest. Shifting a little, she realized that she was lying diagonally across the bed, a sign that the restlessness that had made her change position a hundred times in her half-waking state had continued even after she had fallen asleep. She reached out a hand to switch off the alarm. It was nine o’clock. She stretched and took a deep breath. The pillow next to her still bore traces of Russell’s smell.
She allowed herself a glance into the half-lit, familiar landscape of her bedroom. The next stage of the investigation was out of her hands for now, and Bellew had allowed her a night off. She had smiled at those words. As if taking time off was possible, with the cellphone on the night table next to her that could ring at any moment, bringing news that would make her hide her head under the blankets and wish she could wake up a thousand years and a thousand miles away.
She got out of bed, put on a soft terrycloth bathrobe, picked up the phone and walked barefoot to the kitchen, where she started making coffee. This morning, contrary to habit, she was in no mood for breakfast. The very idea of food turned her stomach. And to think that the last time she’d eaten had been with Russell at the stand in Madison Square Park!
Russell…
As she put the filter in the machine, she felt a momentary anger. With all that she was going through, with a madman somewhere out there threatening to blow up half the city, with Greta lying on a bed in a clinic in a desperate condition, it didn’t seem either possible or fair that there could still be room in her brain to think of that man.
Last night, after they got back from Hornell, he had come to the apartment with her, taken his things and left. He hadn’t asked to stay, and she knew that if she’d suggested it, he would have refused.
Standing in the doorway on his way out, he had turned to look at her with a mixture of sadness and determination in his dark eyes. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow morning.’
‘OK.’
She had stood there for a few moments looking at the closed door.
She poured coffee into a cup. However many sugars she added, she knew it would always be too bitter.
She told herself that what had happened was the kind of thing that happened many times in life. Too many times, maybe. It had been a night full of the only kind of love that time did not cover with frost, the kind that blazed into life at night only to fade with the sun the following morning. That was how he had taken it and that was how she had to take it, too.
But if that’s the price I have to pay to have you, I gladlyaccept…
‘Go fuck yourself, Russell Wade,’ she said out loud, and continued standing there, leaning on the counter, drinking coffee she didn’t really want. She forced herself to think of something else.
At Hornell Municipal Airport, just before the helicopter lifted off to take them back to New York, she had called the captain to update him on the bad news. After she had told him what had happened, a brief silence at the other end had told her that Bellew was trying to hold back a curse.
‘So we’re back to square one.’
Vivien had not admitted defeat. ‘There’s still one lead we can pursue.’
‘Go on.’ There was a slight hint of mistrust in the captain’s voice.
‘We have to go back to the period of the Vietnam war. We absolutely need to find out what happened to the real Wendell Johnson and this other kid nicknamed Little Boss. It’s the only angle we have.’
‘I’ll call the commissioner. At this hour I don’t think it’s possible to do anything, but I’ll start the ball rolling first thing tomorrow morning.’
‘OK.’
The reply had been drowned by the blades as they started to churn up the air. She and Russell had got into the helicopter, and for the whole journey there had been no sound strong enough to break their silence.
The telephone next to her rang. As if her thoughts had called him up, Bellew’s appeared on the display.
‘Vivien here.’
‘How are you feeling?’
‘I’m still alive. Any news?’
‘Yes. And it isn’t good.’
She waited in silence for the cold shower to hit her.
‘Willard contacted the army early this morning. The name Wendell Johnson is classified. There’s no way to access his files.’
Vivien felt anger clutch her stomach. ‘They’re crazy. In a case like this-’
‘I know,’ Bellew interrupted her. ‘But you’re forgetting two things. The first is that we can’t tell them what we’re working on. The second is that even if we could, it’s too flimsy a lead to break through that wall. The commissioner has asked the mayor to intervene. Maybe Gollemberg can approach the president. But there are procedures to go through that take time, even for the most important man in America. And if Russell is right, time is the very thing we don’t have.’
‘It’s crazy. All those people dead…’
She left the sentence unfinished, with a powerful implied reference to those who might still die.
‘I agree. But there’s nothing we can do for now.’
‘Anything else?’
‘One small thing you might be pleased to hear. The DNA test has proved that the man in the wall really is Mitch Sparrow. You were right.’
At any other moment, that would have been a great success. A victim identified and his killer already punished. Now it was only a source of pitiful pride and no consolation at all.
Vivien had tried to react against her sense of discouragement. There was one thing she could do, in the meantime. ‘I want to take a look at… that man’s apartment.’
She had been about to say Wendell Johnson’s apartment but had realized that the name no longer applied. He wasn’t Wendell Johnson any more – he was the Phantom of the Site.