He dropped the card in the airmail box outside and walked next door to the long-distance telephone office. When the call came through, the clerk put him in Cabin 10 as usual, and he could hear the tap sputtering on the line. Sybille answered.
“You’re coming for Christmas!” she said.
“No, I want to invite you down here.”
“My dear, we can’t. We’d have to charter an extra plane to carry the presents my husband has bought me to make up for his guilty conscience.”
“Is he there?”
“At five-thirty? Have you forgotten already what it is to be chained to a machine gun like a poor German private, rat-tatting away for the Fatherland?”
“Will you give him a message? Tell him I’d like to have lunch with him. Write down the date and time carefully-you know what his memory is.”
Christopher gave her a formula that would bring Webster, if he understood it, to Rome the following afternoon.
The shops had just reopened and the streets were teeming. Christopher went into a jewelry store and bought an opal ring for Molly. He put it in his pocket and walked into the Rinascente next door; the department store was so crowded that he moved sideways through a pack of unmoving Italians. He went to the top of the store on the escalator and came back down the stairs, leaving by the front entrance. By the time he reached the taxi stand behind the Galleria Colonna across the street, he was certain that he was still alone.
He rang his own doorbell six times, four long and two short. Molly tapped on the inside of the door four times, and he rang again twice. He heard the locks turning and the chain rattling, and Molly opened the door. She held a bottle of champagne in her hand.
“Can you open this without fumbling?” she asked. “It’s three thousand lire the bottle, you know.”
Sitting on the sofa, Christopher told Molly to close her eyes. He put the opal ring on her finger.
“It’s beautiful,” Molly said. “But aren’t opals supposed to bring bad luck?”
“A little superstition will do us good. Gaze into the stone, Molly, and live each day as if it were your last.”
“What a wonderful sense of humor you have. Is all this business really a joke to you?”
“Isn’t it a joke? Think of it-some little fellow with hate in his heart, deadly dramatic, stalking us in Christmas week. If he exists, he wouldn’t even have been told who we are or why he’s supposed to kill us. All he asks is a chance to be taken seriously.”
“I take him seriously.”
“Take his gun seriously, and his delusions,” Christopher said. “But not him. He’s just a man, and a weak and stupid one or he wouldn’t let himself be used. We know about him. That cancels his value.”
Molly kissed him. She wore no scent or makeup; he had always thought her as clean as a child. Molly did not like the image.
“After this morning,” she said, “I go on the premise that anything is permissible. I’ve been reading your poems again. Explain what you meant by these lines:
“In the cave where my father grows,
He sees my son undoubling from a rose.”
“Christ, Molly, I don’t know. It rhymed.”
“Open up,” she said, pointing a finger.
“I loved my father,” Christopher said. “He lived his whole life without doing anyone any harm. I think I hoped, if I ever had a child, that it would manage to stay innocent, the way the old man did.”
“What was the cave?”
“Silence. He stopped speaking when he was about fifty.”
“Stopped speaking? Altogether? Why? Was he mad?”
“My mother thought so,” Christopher said. “So did I, for a while. Then I began to read a little more and I realized that he would have been treated as a holy man in most places in the world.”
“On the other hand, he could have been mad.” “That’s possible. He refused to give evidence.” “Not a word, not a gesture, to the end of his life?” “Nothing.”
“You behave as if you think what he did was rather beautiful.”
“Oh, I do,” Christopher said.
4
Christopher heated milk in the dark kitchen and drank a cup of cocoa before he woke Molly so that she could lock the door after him. She had slept naked and he embraced her long body, still warm from the blankets. He stood in the hall until he heard all the locks fall into place.
It took him ten minutes to inspect his car. It was still dark and he had no flashlight. He felt the motor with his hands and lay on his back on the cold cobblestones and ran his fingers over the frame. The car had been standing in the rain for a week and the engine started reluctantly.
Christopher drove up the Tiber, crossed it on the Ponte Milvio where Constantine had seen the sign of the Cross, and came down the opposite bank. The streets were empty. When he parked the car and walked into the cemetery, there was enough light to see the tips of the cypresses against a sky filled with sailing clouds.
He walked on the grass among the headstones to avoid the noise of his footsteps on the gravel pathways.
At precisely five o’clock, Klimenko, wrapped in his long overcoat, emerged from a row of cypresses. The Russian walked without hesitation to Shelley’s grave, and Christopher thought again about Klimenko’s tendency to make mistakes: he must have come to the cemetery the evening before and marked the spot.
“Good morning, Paul.”
“Gherman. Did you case this place last night?”
“Why?”
“You knew right where to find Shelley.”
“I came earlier this morning. No one has picked me up.”
Klimenko lifted his feet, in pointed Italian shoes, one after the other out of the wet grass. “Nevertheless, I’d like to get under cover as soon as possible,” he said. “All this standing about in the open isn’t good.”
“That grave over there is where Edward John Trelawny is buried,” Christopher said. “He snatched Shelley’s heart out of his funeral pyre on the beach at Viareggio. Later Trelawny was a secret agent in Greece with Byron. He thought Byron was a romantic amateur.”
“Dung,” Klimenko said. “Let’s go over to the trees.” In shadow, surrounded by the straight stems of the cypresses, Klimenko seemed more at ease. “What arrangements have you made?” he asked.
“If what you have is valuable, I can hand you over to someone this afternoon. They’ll tell you what to expect.”
“What will that be, roughly?”
“Safe transportation to the States, debriefing, a place to stay until you’re ready to surface.”
“I don’t want money,” Klimenko said. “That has to be made plain. No money.”
“All right, I’ll tell them. What do you have with you?”
“Your interest was aroused by Weedkiller. I’ve brought you something.”
Klimenko removed his hat and turned out the sweatband. He handed Christopher three small photographs and a slip of paper with a series of numbers and letters written on it in red ink. The photographs showed two men in dark American suits and white shirts crossing a sidewalk. One of the men carried a large attaché case. The cameraman had been sitting in a car: the angle of the door showed in a corner of the picture. The faces were very clear.
“What bank in Zurich is the account number for?” Christopher asked.
“Dolder und Co., in the Bleicherweg. It’s a small bank. This was a one-time usage.”
“Who are these people?” Christopher held up the clearest photograph.
“The men who made the withdrawal. They spoke American English.”
“Names, Gherman.”
Klimenko shrugged. “They were couriers. The names they used on the hotel register were Anthony Rugged and Ronald Prince.”