For no reason, she remembered feelings of dislocation like this when she was a child in school... it was summer, and she was bored, and there was the drone of study all around her. She had stared until objects became big/little. And she had asked herself, "Am I me? Am I here? Is this really me thinking these thoughts? Me? Me?"
And now, as she watched the graceful, economical movements of this slender Oriental woman stepping back to criticize the flower arrangement, then making a slight correction, Hannah tried desperately to find anchorage against the tide of confusion and fatigue that was tugging her away.
That's odd, she thought. Of all that had happened that day: the horrible things in the airport, the dreamlike flight to Pau, the babbling suggestive talk of the drivers she had gotten rides from, that fool of a café-owner in Tardets, the long walk up the shimmering road to Etchebar... of all of it, the most profound image was her walk up the cedar-lined allée in subaqueous shadow... shivering in the dense shadow as the wind made sea sounds in the trees. It was another world. And odd.
Was it possible that she was sitting here, pouring tea into Limoges, probably looking quite the buffoon with her tight hiking shorts and clumsy, Vibram-cleated boots?
Was it just a few hours ago she had walked dazedly past the old man sitting on the floor of Rome International? "I'm sorry," she had muttered to him stupidly.
"I'm sorry," she said now, aloud. The beautiful woman had said something which had not penetrated the layers of thought and retreat.
The woman smiled as she sat beside her. "I was just saying it is a pity that Nicholai is not here. He's been up in the mountains for several days, crawling about in those caves of his. Appalling hobby. But I expect him back this evening or tomorrow morning. And that will give you a chance to bathe and perhaps sleep a little. That would be nice, wouldn't it."
The thought of a hot bath and cool sheets was almost swooningly seductive to Hannah.
The woman smiled and drew her chair closer to the marble tea table. "How do you take your tea?" Her eyes were calm and frank. In shape, they were Oriental, but their color was hazel, semé of gold flecks. Hannah could not have guessed her race. Surely her movements were Eastern, fine and controlled; but her skin tone was café au lait, and the body within its high-collared Chinese dress of green silk had a distinctly African development of breast and buttocks. Her mouth and nose, however, were Caucasian. And her voice was cultured, low and modulated, as was her laugh when she said, "Yes, I know. It is confusing."
"Pardon me?" Hannah said, embarrassed at having her thoughts read so transparently.
"I am what the kindly disposed call a 'cosmopolitan,' and others might term a mongrel. My mother was Japanese, and it would appear that my father was a mulatto American soldier. I never had the good fortune to meet him. Do you take milk?"
"What?"
"In your tea." Hana smiled. "Are you more comfortable in English?" she asked in that language.
"Yes, in fact I am," Hannah admitted also in English, but with an American tonality.
"I assumed as much from your accent. Good then. We shall speak in English. Nicholai seldom speaks English in the house, and I fear I am getting rusty." She had, in fact, a just-perceptible accent; not a mispronunciation, but a slightly mechanical overenunciation of her British English. It was possible that her French also bore traces of accent, but Hannah, with her alien ear, could not know that.
But something else did occur to her. "There are two cups set out. Were you expecting me, Mrs. Hel?"
"Do call me Hana. Oh, yes, I was expecting you. The man from the café in Tardets telephoned for permission to give you directions. And I received another call when you passed through Abense-de-Haut, and another when you reached Lichans." Hana laughed lightly. "Nicholai is very well protected here. You see, he has no great affection for surprises."
"Oh, that reminds me. I have a note for you." Hannah took from her pocket the folded note the café proprietor had given her.
Hana opened and glanced at it, then she laughed in her low, minor-key voice. "It is a bill. And very neatly itemized, too. Ah, these French. One franc for the telephone call. One franc for your coffee. And an additional one franc fifty—an estimate of the tip you would have left. My goodness, we have made a good bargain! We have the pleasure of your company for only three francs fifty." She laughed and set the bill aside. Then she reached across and placed her warm, dry hand upon Hannah's arm. "Young lady? I don't think you realize that you are crying."
"What?" Hannah put her hand to her cheek. It was wet with tears. My God, how long had she been crying? "I'm sorry. It's just... This morning my friends were... I must see Mr. Hel!"
"I know, dear. I know. Now finish your tea. There is something in it to make you rest. Then I will show you up to your room, where you can bathe and sleep. And you will be fresh and beautiful when you meet Nicholai. Just leave your rucksack here. One of the girls will see to it."
"I should explain—"
But Hana raised her hand. "You explain things to Nicholai when he comes. And he will tell me what he wants me to know."
Hannah was still sniffling and feeling like a child as she followed Hana up the wide marble staircase that dominated the entrance hall. But she could feel a delicious peace spreading within her. Whatever was in the tea was softening the crust of her memories and floating them off to a distance. "You're being very kind to me, Mrs. Hel," she said sincerely.
Hana laughed softly. "Do call me Hana. After all, I am not Nicholai's wife. I am his concubine."
Washington
The elevator door opened silently, and Diamond preceded Miss Swivven into the white workspace of the Sixteenth Floor.
"...and I'll want them available within ten minutes after calclass="underline" Starr, the Deputy, and that Arab. Do you have that?"
"Yes, sir." Miss Swivven went immediately to her cubicle to make the necessary arrangements, while the First Assistant rose from his console.
"I have the scan of Asa Stern's first-generation contacts, sir. It's coming in now." He felt a justifiable pride. There were not ten men alive who had the skill to pull a list based upon amorphous emotional relationships out of Fat Boy.
"Give me a desk RP on it," Diamond ordered as he sat in his swivel chair at the head of the conference table.
"Coming up. Oops! Just a second, sir. The list is one-hundred-eighty percent inverted. It will only take a moment to flip it."
It was typical of the computer's systemic inability to distinguish between love and hate, affection and blackmail, friendship and parasitism, that any list organized in terms of such emotional rubrics stood a 50/50 chance of coming in inverted. The First Assistant had foreseen this danger and had seeded the raw list with the names of Maurice Herzog and Heinrich Himmler (both H's). When the printout showed Himmler to be greatly admired by Asa Stern, and Herzog to be detested, the First Assistant dared the assumption that Fat Boy had done a 180.
"It's not just a naked list, is it?" Diamond asked.
"No, sir. I've requested pinhole data. Just the most salient facts attached to each name, so we can make useful identification."
"You're a goddamned genius, Llewellyn."
The First Assistant nodded in absentminded agreement as he watched the list crawl up his screen in sans-serif IBM lettering.
STERN, DAVID
RELATIONSHIP EQUALS SON... WHITE CARD...
STUDENT, AMATEUR ATHLETE... KILLED, 1972 sub MUNICH OLYMPICS...
* * *
STERN, JUDITH
RELATIONSHIP EQUALS WIFE... PINK CARD...
SCHOLAR. RESEARCHER...
DEAD, 1956 sub NATURAL CAUSES...