Vicky had half-expected everybody on the plane except herself to be at the very least a film star or a millionaire playboy. This man was no movie star she had ever seen, and something told her that he was no playboy either. Her imagination, working on his sharp tanned face and calculating narrow eyes, pictured him as the chief of some construction firm in the Middle East, or an oil geologist from Venezuela. What he confessed to her did much less to enliven her dreams.
“Don’t worry about being uneasy,” he said. “I fly constantly, and I still don’t believe these monsters can get off the ground. Let me introduce myself. I’m Curt Jaeger, a salesman of watches.”
“I’m Vicky Kinian, a bookkeeper.”
Curt Jaeger began asking all the conventional polite questions and, in answer to hers, told her about his life as a commercial traveller between Switzerland and North America, with occasional side trips to Brazil and Portugal.
“What a wonderful life,” Vicky sighed. “I’ve never even been out of America before.”
“But now you are going as a tourist, for pleasure, which is more than I can say,” Jaeger answered. “Tell me about your plans.”
He had a quiet way of inspiring confidence, but not enough to make Vicky confess to anything more than a sightseer’s interest in Europe. She enjoyed talking to him, though, and was almost disappointed when, during their early dinner, he left most of his food on his tray and swallowed two small pills.
“I’m afraid you will have to excuse me,” he told her. “I am always so afraid of airsickness that I can never enjoy the food on these trips. The best condition for me now is to be asleep.”
“I’m sorry. I never realized...”
“Nothing to worry about. I’ll be dead to the world inside of ten minutes. And if you don’t mind some advice from a traveller much more experienced than he likes to admit, get some sleep yourself. In the morning I’d enjoy giving you a few suggestions about what you should see in Lisbon.”
“I’d appreciate that,” she said. “I hope you feel better.”
“I will,” he said drowsily, and mumbled an indistinct goodnight as he turned his back towards her and settled his head on a pillow next to the window.
Many of the other passengers were settling down for the short night as their dinner trays were taken away. The cabin lights dimmed, and Vicky began to think of sleep herself.
“Hi, globetrotter,” said a low, cheerful voice. “Shall we talk a bit now?”
It was Freda Oliveiros, trim and still unwilted.
“Wonderful,” said Vicky. “I can’t get over running into you here.”
Freda perched on the arm of Vicky’s seat and kept her conversation down to a loud whisper.
“Who’d have thought it, Vicky! From that little school in Dullsville, me a flying waitress, and you part of the carriage trade.”
“If I’d had to spend another uninterrupted summer holding hands with an adding machine I’d have been completely off my rocker,” Vicky confessed. “So I decided to go for broke — and I do mean broke! I’m splurging a few bucks my father left me for me twenty-fifth birthday, and I couldn’t think of a better way to do it than seeing some of the places where he was during the war.”
“That’s right,” Freda said, “your dad was a spy, wasn’t he? Made you quite an exotic character back at Myrtle Hill.”
“German measles would’ve seemed exotic at Myrtle Hill,” Vicky replied. “But now that you mention it, there is a little more to this trip than...”
She stopped and compressed her lips. She had blurted out the words without thinking, mostly from a desire to impress an old-time confidante, and maybe to get the burden of the secret off her mind. Now Freda, sensing a confession in the offing, pounced.
“What? Don’t tell me you’ve taken up the cloak-and-dagger racket too?”
Vicky glanced at Curt Jaeger’s back; the rhythm of his breathing was slow and deep. The middle-aged man and woman on the other side of the aisle were engaged in their own low-voice conversation. Ahead of them she could see the broad gleaming dome of a baldheaded man with a hearing-aid bent close over a magazine.
“Promise you won’t tell anybody?” she asked Freda.
“Cross my heart.”
“Well,” Vicky whispered, “my father wrote a letter from Lisbon just before he disappeared and sent it to a lawyer in Des Moines, but the lawyer wasn’t to let me have it until I was twenty-five, assuming my father hadn’t come back by then. He gave it to me on my birthday.”
“And?”
“It was very peculiar, as if my father couldn’t really say what he meant. After all those years... he just said he hoped I’d come to Lisbon...”
“Sort of a slightly overdue wish-you-were-here?” prompted Freda.
“And he... he told me something to do when I got there.”
Freda waited until she could stand the silence no longer.
“For Pete’s sake, what? You’ve got me hooked now!”
Vicky looked around uneasily.
“I... I don’t want to say any more now,” she said. “But I can tell you that until I’ve done that first thing he asked me to do, the whole business is as much a mystery to me as it is to you.”
One of the other stewardesses came down the aisle and muttered to Freda “You’re wanted up front,” before she continued on.
“Just a sec,” Freda said, and turned back to Vicky. “This sounds more intriguing all the time. So it really is Kinian, the international private eye-full.”
“It probably won’t turn out to amount to anything,” Vicky said. “I know I sound silly, and I shouldn’t have bored you with it.”
“That’s a laugh. I really do happen to be the maddest spy-story fan on either side of this ocean. And I’ve also had a bit of experience finding my way around Lisbon — especially alone in the wee hours when some magnate got too big for bis girdle. Maybe I’ll be able to help you. I’ve got a two-day layover there.” She got to her feet. “If I don’t want to be stranded there, permanently, I’d better get back to my job. Sorry I’ve got to run. Catch a few winks and I’ll see you in the morning.”
Vicky thought she could go to sleep now. There was something about sharing almost anything that made it easier to live with. But in this case, if she could have known just how generously she had shared her story the effect on her would have been anything but relaxing.
Curt Jaeger’s thin lips, pressed close against his pillow, wore the faintest twist of a smirk. For the first time since finishing his dinner he allowed himself to think of going to sleep.
And two seats ahead, on the opposite side of the aisle, the baldheaded man with the white goatee and pince-nez, under cover of his magazine, slipped a curiously oversized hearing-aid microphone and amplifier unit into his coat pocket and switched off its battery.
3
Morning on the jetliner was so short and so crammed with facewashing, hairbrushing, and mass-produced breakfasts that there was only space for the shortest snatches of conversation. Vicky and Curt Jaeger, mopping up the last of their scrambled eggs, discovered they were both staying at the same hotel.
“Both of us at the Tagus!” Jaeger said. “Really? What a delightful coincidence. Now it doesn’t matter so much that I’ve not had time to give you my tips on Lisbon. I’ll be there myself for a few days and maybe you’ll even let me give you a guided tour in person...”
“I couldn’t put you to so much trouble,” Vicky said without even trying to sound as if she meant it.
Jaeger laughed.
“I’d hardly consider it trouble. When you’ve had time to catch your breath we’ll make a plan. Right now we’d better fasten our safety belts.”