“She didn’t have to. But think about it, Jordan! What a publicity coup for the famous psychiatrist, Dr. Theobold, if he were able to say he miraculously cured the daughter of the equally famous American brain surgeon, Dr. Carter Cole, of an incurable mental illness by using the surgical techniques and tools invented by the late Dr. Cole himself. Rich parents and husbands from all over the world would be shipping their troubled and troublesome children and wives to Zurich. For a half-hour’s surgery and with only a few days needed for recovery, he could charge whatever he wanted, ten, twenty, fifty thousand dollars a head! Remember, Jordan, I know these people, Theobold and Reichold and the others. They’re Nazis, Jordan. Very ambitious and greedy Nazis. And I know my father.”
“You’re not suffering from an incurable mental illness.”
“Of course not! I’m not even mentally ill. I’m suffering from something, though.”
“What? Other than the sudden, unexpected loss of your parents.”
For a long moment they both remained silent, gazing out the window. Finally, in a voice barely above a whisper, Vanessa said, “Secrets. Secrets kept from me, and secrets I’ve kept from everyone else. Secrets aren’t like lies. They’re more like brain surgery. They kill your soul. Lying is only a technique for keeping secrets. One of the techniques. Lies and silence and…and storytelling, which is nothing more than changing the subject in an interesting way. All those clever diversionary tactics. Like bad behavior in public. Reckless behavior in public. Or like this,” she said, and she put her arms around him and drew him to her and kissed him and softly moaned. She whispered into his ear, “I want you to take me, now, here,” and ran her hand down his chest and began loosening his belt. He kissed her on the mouth and throat and began unbuttoning her shirt — her father’s flannel shirt, although he did not note that.
FAR OUT ON THE LAKE, THE TWO FISHERMEN SLOWLY REELED in their lines and lay their fishing rods in the boat. The man who was the guide, Sam LaCoy, dipped the oar blades into the still water and began to row the boat slowly back toward the Carry. The other man, whose name was Thomas Smith, a retired diplomat, once ambassador to the Court of St. James, turned in the bow and looked back across the lake at the Cole place, Rangeview. The log buildings glowed in the late afternoon sunlight.
“Do you know the Coles?” Smith asked the guide.
“Can’t say I do. Not personally.”
“Damned good people, Dr. Cole and his wife. He’ll be missed around here.”
“Expect so.”
“I wonder what she’ll do with the camp, now that he’s gone. The widow. It’s hard to imagine she or the daughter will want to hold on to it. Carter Cole was a lifelong Adirondacker, a real true Reservist, you know. His father was one of the original shareholders. Not the wife, though. And certainly not the daughter.”
“You plan on making ’em an offer on the place?”
“It’s a thought.”
“Be good to have a camp of your own up here on the Second Lake. Instead of boarding all the time down to the clubhouse cottages.”
“Yes. The Coles got in the Reserve early. My father was a little slow to realize the value of a camp at the Second Lake.”
“The daughter, she must be third generation, then.”
“Right. She’s got quite a reputation, the daughter, Vanessa. You ever meet her?”
“I’ve seen her. From a distance,” the guide said and pulled once on the oars, hard, driving the boat alongside the dock to where Ambassador Smith could step directly from the boat without wetting his boots or trouser cuffs. “Sorry about the fish not biting,” the guide said.
“My fault, Sam, not yours. We’d have caught a string of trout, I’m sure, if I’d been ready early and didn’t have to get back to the clubhouse before dark. Oh, look!” he said and pointed out a ways where ring-size ripples in the flat black surface of the water spread in widening circles, as if someone were dropping pebbles into the lake. “Now they’re feeding.”
The guide said, “If you owned that Cole place, you’d have yourself a couple more hours to catch your supper before going in.”
“You’re right about that,” Ambassador Smith said. “I’ll have to give the matter some thought.”
The guide took up their gear and pack basket, and the two men headed into the woods of the Carry on to the First Lake, where another boat awaited them.
At breakfast on the morning of April 5, 1937, the big American, the one they called Rembrandt, announced to the others that today’s mission would be his last. He told them he’d had enough. Tomorrow he was going to Madrid. He intended to stay at the Hotel Florida with the American journalist Matthews and the novelists Hemingway and Dos Passos and the photographer Capa. He claimed they were friends of his. He said that he wanted to make pictures of the war to help raise money back in the States. He was an artist, he said to them, not a soldier, and could do more for the anti-Fascist cause with his pictures than by machine-gunning men in trenches from the air, which he said was like shooting ducks in a barrel. Anyone could do that. They didn’t need him for it. The other pilots said nothing. He told them he didn’t care if he was breaking his contract with the Republic of Spain, the government could keep his back pay and whatever signing bonus they still owed him, he’d had enough and wanted to be able to sleep at night without seeing bodies exploding in the air. The others seemed not to mind. They went on eating breakfast. The big American was the least popular man in the unit and had been from the start. Finally Fairhead spoke. He said if this was to be Groves’s last mission he might as well lead it himself. An hour later they were in the air in a V of V formation, with the departing American leading the point patrol. They had their Russian monoplanes now, the Polikarpov I–16s that the Spanish called Moscas. There were heavy rain squalls and a low ceiling of about fifteen hundred feet. They crossed the line at Brihuega where the Italians had attempted to cut their way to Torija and began their bombing run against the lines of tanks parked alongside the valley road. The big American dropped his bombs on the tanks, and the rest of the pilots did the same, and they destroyed many of them. Then Fairhead, who led the right patrol, waggled the wings of his aircraft and pointed up and to their left, where there was a squadron of Fiat single-seat CR 32s, no match for the speed and armaments of the Russian monoplanes. The pilots put their Moscas into a sharp right echelon and began climbing, closing fast on the Fiats. There were seven of the Italians and then, still higher, another five. When the airplanes engaged, formation flying was no longer possible. They broke into one-on-one dogfights, making passing side shots mainly as they tried to position themselves behind their targets. The Moscas began to take advantage of their superior maneuverability and climbing speed. The big American got himself in on the tail of the lead Fiat and fired his 20-millimeter cannons for fifteen seconds straight, sending the Italian spinning downward, spilling a trail of water, gasoline, and black smoke. The American quickly dove after a second target a thousand feet below, but the Italian saw him coming and turned away and dove in the opposite direction. The American curled back in pursuit, but after a few moments the Fiat managed to elude him in the low clouds. When the American broke through the clouds at about five thousand feet, he looked up and saw five Fiats diving toward him. He plunged back down into the clouds again and with the Fiats close behind carved a sharp left vertical bank and completed a 360-degree turn, bringing him in behind his pursuers, firing both machine guns steadily and scattering all five of the Fiats in different directions. A few moments later when he emerged below the clouds again, he found himself in unfamiliar territory, mountainous, with the tops of the mountains in clouds. He was alone in the sky. He dropped down into a valley, hoping for some sign, a river or a road or a village that would help him read his map. As he moved along a rough valley cut with arroyos and narrow dry stream-beds, he spotted too late an antiaircraft gun emplacement in among the trees. At that instant, before he heard the sound of the gun or saw the white puff of smoke in front of his airplane or the second off to his right, a third shell struck his airplane. It hit the left side of the fuselage behind the cockpit, and he could no longer fly the airplane. He was bleeding badly from his shattered left thigh and ankle, and then another shell hit the airplane, this time in the cowling, smashing the engine, igniting the fuel, and instantly the airplane flipped onto its back and began its spiraling plummet to the ground.