She felt herself drifting off, and her mind became confused… There was a key somewhere; she’d always felt that. A key such as Eva possessed, and which Arnold possessed, and it was a master key to many locks, many doors and closets and chests. And inside were secrets and ciphers, skeletons and scandals. Everyone else seemed to know this — O’Brien, Peter, James Allerton, her sister, Ann, her sister’s fiancé, Nicholas West… Her father had known it too, and Colonel Carbury knew it. It was like a great family secret that the children sensed but did not know, that the adults lived with but never mentioned.
Tonight, she thought, they would hold a family council. Tonight little Kate would be told.
15
Peter Thorpe walked into the second-floor cocktail lounge of the University Club and sidled up to the bar. “Good evening, Donald.”
The bartender smiled. “Evening, Mr. Thorpe.”
“Sorry about the other night.”
“Hey, no problem.”
“I remember looking into the bar mirror there… I saw myself leaning into a force-ten gale wind that no one else in the room seemed to feel.”
The bartender laughed. “What’s your pleasure?”
“Just a wimp water, please.”
The bartender laughed again and poured a Perrier.
Thorpe pulled a copy of the Times toward him and flipped through it. “I can’t believe the number of murders committed in this town. Crazy.”
“Yeah, but most murders involve people who know each other. Did you know that? And not our kind of people, either. Banjos and bongos.”
“Banjos and bongos?”
Donald smiled as he polished a glass. “Yeah, you know.” He looked at a Hispanic busboy near the tables and lowered his voice. “Blacks and Ricans. Banjos and bongos.” He winked.
Thorpe smiled back. “You have an excellent command of the modern vernacular, Donald, and a good ear for idioms and jokes. I loved the definition of a woman. Have any more?”
“Yeah. What do you get when you cross a black with a Frenchman?”
“What?”
“Jacques Custodian.” He slapped his rag against the bar and laughed.
Thorpe raised his glass of mineral water. “I salute you.” He drank. “By the way, do you have any chits on a man named Carbury? Supposed to be registered here, but—”
Donald flipped through a stack of cards. “Nope.”
“Englishman. Older man, tall, thin, maybe a mustache.”
“Oh, Edwards. Comes in here a lot.”
“He’s been here since maybe Wednesday?”
“Right, Edwards.” He flipped through his chits again. “Room 403. Came in maybe ten, fifteen minutes ago. Had one and left.”
“Did he have a monkey suit on?”
Donald scratched his head. “No… no, he had tweeds.” Donald seemed to notice Thorpe’s evening clothes for the first time. “Hey, heading for a big shindig, Mr. Thorpe?”
Thorpe refolded the newspaper. “Ever hear of the OSS?”
The young bartender shook his head.
“World War Two,” prompted Thorpe.
“Oh, yeah. Used to entertain the troops.”
Thorpe laughed. “No, Donald, that’s the USO. How about the KGB? M16?”
“The KGB… sure — Russian spies. M16… sounds familiar . .”
“How about the SS?”
“Sure. Nazis.”
Thorpe smiled. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
“About what?”
“Oh, about life. About heroes and villains. About things like good and evil, about faded glory, about sacrifice, duty, honor, country… about remembering — memories. A good memory is not necessarily a good thing, Donald.”
Donald didn’t like the turn the conversation had taken. “Yeah—”
“The OSS Veterans dinner. Office of Strategic Services, predecessor of the CIA.” He pointed to the front page of the Times. “That’s where I’m going. They get together to remember. They remember too damned much. That’s dangerous.”
“Hey, you’re going to hear the President speak?”
“Right.” Thorpe pushed a sealed envelope across the bar. “Do me a favor, Donald. Call around the club — billiards room, library, and all — see if you can locate Edwards. Get this to him.”
Donald put the envelope behind the bar. “Sure… you want me to page him, or put this in his message box?”
“No. I want you to give it to him personally, before he leaves here. You might even call up to his room. He’s probably dressing for dinner. But keep my name out of it. Okay?” Thorpe winked in a conspiratorial manner.
Donald automatically winked knowingly in return, though he seemed a bit confused.
Thorpe slid a ten-dollar bill across the bar and Donald stuffed it in his pocket. Thorpe looked at his watch. “Time and wilted salad wait for no man, my friend.” He slid off the barstool. “You’re familiar with T. S. Eliot, of course. ‘Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past.’ Well, Donald, that future will be here soon. The tidal wave of the future, which began as a ripple forty years ago, will wash over us all. In fact, I can give you a precise time for it: Fourth of July weekend. You’ll see. Remember where you heard it.”
“Sure, Mr. Thorpe. Hey, have a good night.”
“I’m afraid I’ve made other plans.”
Thorpe looked out the cab window. Traffic on Park Avenue had slowed to a crawl, and ahead he could see by the illumination of floodlights that two lanes were blocked by barriers. Mounted police moved up and down the avenue in the light rain. On the left side of Park Avenue, between 66th and 67th streets, opposite the Seventh Regiment Armory, a few hundred demonstrators were chanting from behind police barriers. The cab driver said, “What the hell’s going on now?”
“The President is speaking at the armory.”
“Christ! You should’ve told me. Who’s he speaking to?”
“Me. And I’m late. I’ll walk.” He paid the driver and began walking through the stalled traffic. Limousines were double- and triple-parked around the armory entrance, and across the street, the demonstrators were waving antinuclear placards and singing a 1960s song:
Thorpe nodded. “You’ve got that right, bozos.”
Thorpe passed through a cordon of uniformed police and approached the armory. He looked up at the hundred-year-old structure of brick and granite. These OSS functions had always been held at the Waldorf or Pierre, but in the beleaguered spirit of the times, they’d been shifted to this structure of ersatz bellicosity. Brooding towers rose into the night, topped by sinister-looking rifle ports, but the whole effect was like a Coldstream Guard’s uniform: better fitted for show than for battle.
Thorpe climbed a canopied staircase past a file of tactical police and entered the armory through a pair of massive oak doors.
The lobby was paneled in heavy wood and lined with impressive portraits of the martial variety. Hung from the two-story-high ceiling were frayed and faded battle flags and regimental colors. The large chandeliers were early Tiffany, and the entire feeling was one of nineteenth-century gentility, thought Thorpe, a venerable Park Avenue gentleman’s club gone slightly to seed. It had been a place where New York’s upper crust played soldier on weekends, and it still had the function of providing a convivial atmosphere for East Siders who owed, or thought they owed, a modicum of national service.
Late-arriving guests scurried past Thorpe, and dozens of Secret Service men stood around in business suits or semiformal wear. A few tried to pass for waiters or busboys. The ones who wore the unfashionably long jackets, he knew, were packing Uzi submachine guns and sawed-off shotguns.