Betrayals

Twenty-One

Thomas Blackburn stared through the tall, paned windows of the Congregational Library reading room, gazing down at the Old Granary Burying Ground. Benjamin Franklin’s parents were buried there, and the victims of the Boston Massacre and Eliza Blackburn. Back in 1892, the Congregational Association had deliberately chosen the 14 Beacon Street site behind the old graveyard for their new building to assure those who used the private library would enjoy peace and tranquility long into the future. Their foresightedness had proven worthwhile.

A squirrel scurried along the second-floor fire escape and hopped into one of the huge trees that shaded Old Granary, a perennial tourist favorite. Thomas could remember going to Eliza’s grave with his father, and taking Stephen for his first visit when he was five or six, and then Rebecca and Nate during one of his rare home leaves in 1960. Jenny had called him a ghoul and had confiscated the children’s charcoal rubbing of their famous ancestor’s headstone. Rubbings had since been outlawed, due to the damage they caused the stones.

Thomas considered the reading room, with its original Tiffany ceiling, Persian rugs, fireplace and eighteenth-century portraits of famous churchmen, one of Boston ’s great hidden treasures. The library itself was primarily a theological library, but it was also well-known for its substantial historical holdings, obtained by virtue of the Congregationalists having run the Commonwealth of Massachusetts until disestablishment in 1831. Thomas came to the library often, if, at times, only to think.

As today.

It seemed he was never without his memories, and the older he got the more vivid they became. Gisela, Benjamin, Quang Tai…his wife, Emily; his son, Stephen. In the night when sleep eluded him, he would often wander in the garden among the shadows, talking to the friends and family he’d lost. He would explain, apologize, cry. They never answered, but left him alone in his anguish. He didn’t blame them. What was there to say?

If only he hadn’t been such a fool.

He could torture himself with hypothetical situations. Sometimes he did. He would see their faces with such stark vividness, and remember how they’d trusted and believed in him. Emily when, clinging to him, she would tell him her fears of childbirth, and he would reassure her that everything would be all right. It hadn’t been. Gisela, his friend, who’d wept on his shoulder in her despondency over the loss of her Jupiter Stones. He had made cavalier assurances to her, as well.

Stephen, Benjamin, Quang Tai. All dead because Thomas Blackburn had insisted nothing would happen to them in that part of the Mekong Delta.

It was true, he thought. He held himself responsible for his own son’s death, a solitary burden no parent should have to bear.

He never let on to anyone the measure of his despair, of course. The sleepless nights, the agonizing walks, the countless times he would find himself drained and exhausted, perspiring and trembling like one of those stereotypical bony old men. He wanted no one’s pity. Even in those terrible moments of despair, the prospect of not carrying on never occurred to him. He would never give in, if for no other reason than to be there should anyone else have to suffer for his mistakes.

“Grandfather?”

The squirrel had scrambled back onto the fire escape and was teasing another thinner squirrel. Thomas watched for a few seconds, composing himself before he turned to this granddaughter. He had left a note at the house telling where he was. Another mistake?

Looking pale and unusually serious, Rebecca held up a paper bag. “I brought sandwiches. You haven’t had lunch yet?”

“No. Rebecca, something’s wrong-”

“Can we eat in back?”

They went back to the stacks, where they unwrapped their sandwiches at an oak table library volunteers could use. Thomas often worked in the climate-controlled rare books room. He poured a couple of cups of coffee and sat across from Rebecca.

“You’re looking grim,” he told her.

“I’ve spent the better part of the last two hours reading old articles on the ambush.” She didn’t need to specify which ambush; they both knew. “I discovered several coincidences that are too much for me to swallow.”

He gave her a mild look, but it felt as if something hot and sharp had just been stabbed into his lower abdomen. “Did you?”

Her eyes seemed huge in the dim light; she didn’t smile. “The driver of the Jeep that day was a Frenchman, a former member of the Foreign Legion. He was the only survivor, but he was believed captured by the Vietcong. I couldn’t find his name or anything about what happened to him.” She paused, then added bitterly, “I gather, though, that he’s still alive.”

Thomas pushed aside his sandwich, roast beef with lots of red onion; he wouldn’t have blamed Rebecca if she’d sprinkled arsenic over the works. “Are you asking me what I know about him?”

“I’m not finished. I did some more digging, Grandfather, and I discovered an old 1959 photograph from the Boston Globe. It was taken during the trip you and I took to France. I was just four, so I don’t remember much of what we did. But one of the things you did was show up at the funeral of Baroness Gisela Majlath.”

She paused to assess Thomas’s reaction to her dramatic announcement, but he’d had many, many years to perfect his ability to maintain his composure under the most trying of circumstances. The only reason the Globe had bothered running that photograph was because he was in it.

“For someone who never completed her college education,” he said, “your research abilities are impressive. Of course, most research simply requires tenacity, and you certainly have that, Rebecca.”

“Gisela committed suicide.”

“Yes, I know.” He breathed out, his memory of that dreadful day still fresh. “She was a friend of mine.”

Rebecca was obviously restraining herself. “You never mentioned her.”

“I had a great many friends I’ve never mentioned to you. I am a good deal older than you are, my dear. My friendship with Gisela was a quiet one.”

Her eyes flashed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re being impertinent.”

“Impertinent is one of those words that went out with Calvin Coolidge.”

“I knew Calvin in his later years-”

“Grandfather, Gisela Majlath claimed to have been a victim of a jewel thief called Le Chat.”

Thomas picked a bit of onion from his sandwich and nibbled on it. “Why is it,” he said rhetorically, “that when the young stumble upon something new to them they assume no one else could possibly have known about it before they did? Yes, Gisela told the police this Le Chat stole some gems that had come into her family-”

“The Jupiter Stones.”

The woman was annoyingly thorough. “Correct.”

“And no one believed her, so she threw herself into the Mediterranean.”

“Baldly put, but apparently, also correct.”

“Apparently?”

“I wasn’t there.”

She digested that for a moment, then asked, “Do you want to tell me about Le Chat?”

“Why should I?” he replied testily. “Obviously we both already know.”

Rebecca was so rigid, Thomas thought she would crack and crumble any second. “The police were going to arrest a popular Grand Prix driver named Jean-Paul Gerard as Le Chat, but he disappeared.”

“And you’re assuming he turned up in Vietnam in 1963 and again in 1975.”

“I know he did.” Rebecca swallowed, still working at controlling herself. “I found an old photograph of Gerard in his racing days. Turn his hair white and add some scars and we’ve got our Frenchman.”

Thomas stared up at the milky glass flooring of the stacks. He hated this kind of deception. And for years he’d dreaded precisely this confrontation with his granddaughter. “Rebecca, you’ve done enough digging,” he said. “Now stop. Drop this before you end up getting yourself or someone else hurt. Yes, Jean-Paul Gerard drove the Jeep when your father, Benjamin and Tai were killed in 1963. He was captured and spent five years in a jungle prisoner-of-war camp before escaping during the Tet Offensive in 1968. He’s the Frenchman who participated in Tam’s killing in 1975.”

“And he blames you for what happened to him?”

“Undoubtedly.”

Rebecca inhaled, an obvious act of self-control. “Has he been to see you?”

“Not yet. I haven’t seen Jean-Paul in twenty-six years.”

Her gaze was ice. “Lucky you.”

Thomas shrugged. What could he say? He and Rebecca had never really talked about 1963. If he had his way, they never would. An uncomfortable silence descended between them. The two sandwiches and coffee remained untouched.

Finally, Rebecca asked, “You knew who I was talking about when I described this Jean-Paul Gerard yesterday, but you didn’t mention him.”

“Correct.”

“Why not?”

“What would have been the point?”

She didn’t answer. “What have you told Jared that you haven’t told me?”

“Nothing. Rebecca, Jean-Paul Gerard was a bitter and dangerous man before his captivity. I can only imagine what he’s like now. You should do everything you can to avoid him. That’s all you need to know.”

“Are you protecting me,” she said angrily, “or yourself?”

Thomas rose, neither hurt nor insulted, simply determined to have his way-and that didn’t include defending himself to his furious granddaughter. “I’m doing what I feel I must. If that’s insufficient for you, you’ll have to decide for yourself what to do about it. I’ve given you my advice. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m not terribly hungry.”

Neither was Rebecca. She threw down her sandwich and watched her grandfather return to the reading room. The Frenchman-this Jean-Paul Gerard-had been a jewel thief and race-car driver on the Riviera in 1959. He had driven the Jeep the day of the 1963 ambush that had left Quang Tai, Benjamin Reed and Stephen Blackburn dead.

Twelve years later, Gerard had shot Jared Sloan in Saigon.

Now, fourteen years later, he had turned up in San Francisco and Boston.

Why?

Was there a connection among 1959, 1963 and 1975?

Yes: him. One Jean-Paul Gerard.

And the Blackburn family. Thomas Blackburn had attended the funeral of one of Gerard’s robbery victims. He had arranged the trip into the Mekong Delta. His son-another Blackburn -had been killed. And, in 1975, Rebecca Blackburn had saved Mai Sloan and gotten her, Jared and herself out of Saigon.

Along with the Jupiter Stones. She mustn’t forget those. Were they another connection?

“I was your father’s friend, and I believe-I know he would have been proud of you.”

But how could a man like Jean-Paul Gerard and Stephen Blackburn have been friends?

Giving up on her sandwich, Rebecca wrapped up the leftovers, stuck both sandwiches in a small refrigerator and went after her grandfather.

The woman at the front desk said he’d just left. “You can probably catch him.”

“He didn’t say where he was headed?”

“No. A friend of his had just come in, and they went off together.”

Sloan. “Tall, dark hair, good-looking?”

“Oh, no. This one had very white hair and quite a scar-”

Rebecca ran.

The sun, breaking through the clouds, glistened on the rain-soaked lawn in front of the Massachusetts State House. Thomas held his umbrella in his left hand, using it as a sort of cane as he studied Jean-Paul Gerard. War and time-and his own stubbornness-had left him ravaged and old and mean, a shadow of the carefree, daredevil young race-car driver he’d been thirty years ago. Thomas didn’t find it easy to look at a man who’d suffered as much, and as needlessly, as had this relentless Frenchman. Yet he still could see Gisela in the soft brown of the younger man’s eyes, in the shape and sensitivity of his mouth, and he wondered if he was being too harsh or if, at least, there was hope.

“I want him to be happy, Thomas,” Gisela had said. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

She had been so proud of her only child. Nevertheless-and Thomas had never understood why-she had persisted in her refusal to acknowledge him as her son. She maintained that Jean-Paul preferred to shroud himself in mystery, pretending that he’d come from nowhere and letting people-women, especially-fantasize about his origins. It was a part of his mystique. That he was the illegitimate son of a popular woman who claimed she was a displaced Hungarian aristocrat certainly would have had its romantic side. Only after they were both gone, Gisela to her grave and Jean-Paul to Sidi Bel Abbès and the Légion étrangère as a fugitive, did Thomas consider that it was perhaps Jean-Paul who was protecting his mother, not the other way around. For the popular young Frenchman had to have known that telling the world he was Gisela’s son would have stimulated a scrutiny to which her life couldn’t have stood up.

“You’re an old man now, Thomas,” Jean-Paul said with unmistakable satisfaction. “Are you starting to smell the dirt in your grave?”

“I don’t believe I’m as old as you yourself are, Jean-Paul. You’ve had a hard life. I’m sorry.” He added softly, “Gisela never wanted that.”

“Don’t give me your pity, old man.”

“Consider it commentary, not pity.” Thomas felt himself tiring already and put more weight on his old, sturdy umbrella. “She won’t give you the stones, will she?”

Jean-Paul’s eyes-so suspicious now when once they’d been eager, trusting, filled with an unshakable zest for life-narrowed as he considered Thomas’s words. “I haven’t even seen her.”

“I don’t believe you, Jean-Paul,” Thomas said quietly, giving him a small, sympathetic smile. “You’ve never been an adept liar. Perhaps if you’d recognized this many years ago you’d have saved yourself-and others-a good deal of anguish.”

“And you? Think of all the anguish you’d have saved if you’d thrown yourself into the Mediterranean thirty years ago instead of Gisela.”

Thomas looked at him. “I have.”

Jean-Paul clenched his fists at his side. “I want the Jupiter Stones, old man. Nothing more. They belonged to Gisela, and I intend to get them back. Don’t try and stop me.”

“You can’t beat her. You of all people should know that.”

“I’m not trying to beat her.”

“You’re playing with fire,” Thomas said, his tone deceptively mild. Seldom had he been so serious. “You played with fire thirty years ago and got burned, and now you’re doing it again. It’s time to forget those stones and move on.”

The Frenchman inhaled slowly, his eyes never leaving the older man, then he tried a new tactic. “Annette says she doesn’t have them.”

Thomas shrugged. “Perhaps she’s telling the truth.”

“She’s not,” Jean-Paul said softly. “She doesn’t know what the truth is. But I didn’t come for your approval of my actions. I know Jared Sloan is in Boston, and so is your granddaughter. Tell them to stay out of my way. And you, too. Let me do what I have to do.”

“Jean-Paul-” Thomas sighed, breaking off. He put out a hand to the younger man, but Gerard stepped backward, as if afraid of any perceptibly amiable gesture. “I’ve made terrible mistakes. I’ve been arrogant and unthinking, but like you, I never thought my decisions would have negative consequences. Jean-Paul, be better than I was.”

“Go back to your books, old man. I’ve said all I intend to say.”

“I’ll stop you if I must,” Thomas said in a low voice.

The Frenchman laughed, a sandpapery sound in which his years of suffering resonated more plainly than any threat. “You go ahead and try.”

Leaving Thomas on the sidewalk in front of the State House, Jean-Paul trotted back across Beacon Street and onto Boston Common, disappearing in the shadows as the clouds once again closed over the sun. Drops of rain landed on Thomas’s nose and cheeks. He started to put up his umbrella, but discovered his knees were trembling and he needed its support for walking. With the rain increasing, he debated a moment, then headed inside the State House and down a quiet hall to the portrait of Eliza Blackburn. She looked rather like Rebecca. Thomas felt his eyes burning with fatigue and raw emotion as first he studied Eliza’s face, then the cameo brooch George Washington had given the plucky Revolutionary War heroine; the brooch itself was now on display at a museum in Concord.

“Well, Eliza,” he whispered hoarsely, “I’ve made a fine mess of the Blackburn name, haven’t I?”

He thought he could see her smile, hear her whisper back to him, “All for a good cause, my son.” But of course he knew that was impossible. They were only the words he wished he could hear, from someone, but never would.

Jean-Paul was out of breath by the time he reached the Park Street subway station on the Tremont Street side of the Common. He slowed down, wheezing and totally disgusted with himself. In his two years with the Légion étrangère, he’d been able to run ten miles without getting winded, carry a seventy-pound load on his back for days, drink all day and screw all night, and the next morning spot a spider on a roof a half-mile off. His acute vision had been the envy of his fellow soldiers and had contributed to his skill as a marksman. Even after his five years as a prisoner of war, when he’d suffered malnutrition, isolation and severe brutality, he could see better than most, if not as well as he once could.

“Hello. It’s Jean-Paul Gerard, isn’t it?”

He whirled around and saw Rebecca Blackburn standing too close behind him, her face drained of color.

“I followed you,” she said. “I saw you and my grandfather talking.”

Jean-Paul found himself wanting to touch her, not in any romantic, sexual way, but as the child she’d been in picture after picture Stephen Blackburn had shown him on hot, lonely nights in Saigon. He couldn’t bring himself to speak.

“What were you and my grandfather talking about?”

“About how foolish you would be to stay after me,” Jean-Paul said quietly.

Rebecca gave him a cool look, her cheeks regaining their color. “You were in the Mekong Delta with my father when he died.”

So she knew. Jean-Paul all at once felt very tired and not nearly as confident in his purpose as he had. Perhaps he should have left The Score in the newsstand and remained in Honolulu.

Rebecca eyed him with impatience. “And you’re a jewel thief.”

But her voice quavered, and she hesitated, suddenly looking frightened when he took another step toward her. He could see how very blue her eyes were, how dark the lashes, how creamy her skin. Just knowing she was in Boston should have been enough to keep him away. Wherever he went, he brought agony and death. Perhaps Thomas Blackburn was right; he would never win.

“Stay away from me,” he told Stephen Blackburn’s beautiful daughter. She paid no attention to the rain pelting on her chestnut hair and soaking her blouse. He could see the clear outline of her breasts under the wet fabric. He put out a hand, as Thomas had to him, and didn’t blame her when she drew back. And he said, “I’ll only hurt you.”

She raised her squarish chin. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“Perhaps you should be.”

As she considered his remark and her own response, Jean-Paul suddenly understood that this wasn’t a woman who discouraged easily. She would keep coming and coming and coming until she’d found answers. She had spotted him talking with her grandfather and followed him onto the Common, a reckless act considering how little she really knew about him. He would have to be more alert.

“I’m not going to be put off,” she told him.

“Then you’re a fool.”

He drew back one hand and before she could react, he cuffed her hard on the side of the head. He kept his expression grim and menacing, forcing himself not to grimace as her eyes widened in shock and pain and she staggered backward.

Around them, people backed off.

Blood spurted from Rebecca’s mouth and it might have been Jean-Paul’s own for the pain he felt.

She didn’t scream. She put one hand up in front of her face in belated self-defense, but Jean-Paul couldn’t bring himself to strike her again. Instead he moved very fast to make certain that few onlookers witnessed what he’d done. Another blow and someone would call the police.

“Stay away from me,” he said through gritted teeth, and fled into the Tremont Street traffic. Horns blared, brakes screeched. He wouldn’t have cared if a car hit him. Picking up his pace, ignoring the ripping pain in his chest, Jean-Paul darted down a side street.

On the Common, Rebecca broke away from the crowd that had gathered around her and ran hard through the rain, trying to catch up with Gerard. She wanted to ask him about the Jupiter Stones-to give them to him if they were what he wanted. Then he could take the stones and go off and leave them all alone.

But she’d lost him.

She brushed one hand at the blood that had dribbled from her cut lip down her chin. She ended up smearing it, probably making her injury look worse than it was. How dramatic. Her head throbbed and she felt stupid. She finally gave up on finding the Frenchman among the lunchtime crowds and headed back up to Beacon Hill. She thought of her grandfather and his refusal to talk to her, Jared Sloan and his, of Jean-Paul Gerard and his. And for the first time in her life, Rebecca though she understood why intelligence-gathering organizations had invented truth serums.