The Death Instinct

Chapter Twelve

The United States should have been all fanfare and barnstorm in the autumn of 1920, all marching bands and whistle-stop. Americans were electing a new president, and the excitement always appurtenant to that event should have been redoubled in 1920 because women for the first time had the right to vote. One of the major candidates – the Republican, Senator Warren G. Harding – might even have been nominated with the fairer sex in mind.

Harding's appeal to women was not a matter of speculation. It was established fact. He had a loyal wife of sixty-one, a longtime mistress of forty-seven, another mistress of thirty, and a flame of twenty-four still head over heels in love. 'It's a good thing I'm not a woman,' Harding liked to quip. 'I can never say no.' Harding's record of political accomplishment may have been thin, but with silver hair and dashing smile, with dark eyebrows, commanding eyes, and a strong chin, he was undoubtedly a presidential-looking man.

Yet the steam had gone out of the campaign locomotive. Unease hung too palpably wherever crowds gathered. Arrests and deportations went on, yet the terrorist attack remained unsolved. Men in power – rich men, governors, and senators – demanded remobilization. Newspapers demanded war. The cloud of smoke and flaming dust that blotted the sun from Wall Street on September sixteenth had not dissipated. Its pall had spread over the entire nation.

On September 27, the day Younger and Colette left for Europe, papers around the country reported that the Soviet dictator, V. I. Lenin, had infiltrated the United States with clandestine agents to foment labor unrest, terror, and revolution. In Boston the cab drivers struck, and there was a run on the banks. In Alabama, soldiers with machine guns prevented a miners' strike. The third most popular presidential candidate, Eugene Debs, was an unabashed socialist, but at least he was in prison, having dared in 1918 to question the necessity of the war. Through it all, Prohibition parched the workingman's throat, and the still-resounding echoes of September sixteenth made people hurry as they walked out of doors in the great cities. The country was holding its breath – and didn't even know what for.

On Fourteenth Street in Manhattan, between Fifth and Sixth avenues, the Littlemores were enjoying a late-evening quarrel. It had begun in their kitchen and ended up in the street. The outdoor venue was more favorable to Mr Littlemore; inside, it had become increasingly difficult for him to duck the objects thrown in his direction – not very heavy ones, mostly, and not very accurately – by Mrs Littlemore.

Betty had not shared her husband's excitement at the prospect of moving to Washington, DC, where Littlemore had agreed to take a job with the Treasury Department. They had children in school, she pointed out. They had family in New York. Her mother and brother lived in New York. All their friends lived in New York. How could they just pick up and leave?

Littlemore did not try, after a time, to answer these questions. He just scraped the toe of his shoe against the sidewalk until his wife fell silent. 'I'm sorry, Betty,' he said at last. 'I should have talked to you first.'

'You really want it, don't you?' she asked.

'Been hoping for this kind of break my whole life,' he said.

She handed him a folded piece of paper from her pocket. 'It came today,' she said. 'It says how much we'd have to pay for Lily's operation.'

Lily, the Littlemores' one-and-a-half-year-old, had been born with a slight but complete atresia of her external auditory canals. In other words, at the center of her tiny, pretty, and seemingly healthy ears, where the aperture ought to have been, there was instead a membrane and probably, below it, a bone. The toddler responded well to sound, but if she was ever to hear and speak properly, she would have to have surgery – and soon. The surgery in turn required a specialist. The specialist required money.

'Two thousand dollars?' said Littlemore. 'To make a little opening?'

'Two thousand for each ear,' answered Betty.

Littlemore reread the letter: his wife was right, as usual. 'That settles it,' he said. 'I've got to take the Treasury job. It pays almost double what I'm making now.'

'Jimmy,' said Betty. 'It's just the opposite. We'll never have four thousand dollars, wherever you work. We're going to have to put her in a special school. They say we have to start using sign language with her right now. They got a school for that on Tenth Street. Free. It's the only one in the country.'

Littlemore frowned. He looked up and down Fourteenth Street – at the fine large buildings on the corners of the avenues, and at the plainer, smaller, walk-ups between them, in one of which was his own apartment. 'Okay,' he said. 'I'll turn the job down.'

Winning an argument invariably had a palliative effect on Betty Littlemore, who at once took her husband's side. 'Maybe we wouldn't have to move,' she said.

'That's right,' replied Littlemore hopefully. 'A lot of the investigating is going to be up here in New York anyway.'

In the end, it was decided that Littlemore would put it to Secretary Houston that he would need to split his time between New York and Washington. Houston turned out to be extremely accommodating. In Washington, Littlemore would have an office in the Treasury Department. In Manhattan, he would work out of the Sub-Treasury on Wall Street. The federal government would even pay for his train travel.

A man exiting Union Station in the District of Columbia – the largest railway station in the world when it opened, with marble floors and gold leaf dripping from its barrel-vaulted ceiling a hundred feet high – found himself, on a Sunday evening in October 1920, in a raw, vast, undeveloped plaza, with a fountain plunked down in the center and a few cars meandering dustily around it, unhindered by lanes or any law-like regularities of direction. Men were playing baseball on an adjacent weedy field. Across the plaza squatted a few dozen temporary dormitories, thrown up hastily during the war.

The effect was of leaving civilization for a wilderness outpost. Three blocks away stood the nation's Capitol, its dome tinted crimson in the failing sun – another monumental structure surrounded by an expanse of unbuilt land.

Jimmy Littlemore looked at the Capitol with a sense of awe, a suitcase in one hand and a briefcase in the other. It was his first time in Washington. He had a New Yorker's expectation that a throng of taxicabs would be jostling outside the station's doors, vying for passengers. There wasn't a single one.

As Littlemore was wondering how he would get to his hotel, he noticed a black car parked a short distance away, with a tall blonde woman leaning against one of its doors, smoking through a long cigarette holder. She was about thirty, dressed in business attire including a tightly fitted skirt, and exceptionally good-looking. When she saw the detective, she began walking his way, her gait attracting the attention of every man she passed.

'James Littlemore, I presume?' she said. 'From New York?'

'That's me,' said Littlemore.

'You look just the way they described you,' replied the blonde woman.

'How did they describe me?'

'Wet behind the ears. You're late. You kept me waiting almost an hour.'

'And you would be?'

'I work for Senator Fall. The Senator would like to see you tomorrow in his office. At four o'clock sharp.'

'Is that right?'

'That's right. Good luck, New York.' While they were speaking, her car had rolled up next to them. The chauffeur scurried out and opened a door for her. She climbed in, her long legs showing for a moment before they swung inside the car.

'Say, ma'am,' said Littlemore through the open window. 'Think you might give me a lift to my hotel?'

'Where are you staying?' she asked.

'The Willard?'

'Very nice.'

'Secretary Houston's picking up the tab.'

' Very nice.' She signaled the driver, who started the engine.

'What about that ride, ma'am?' asked Littlemore.

'Sorry – not in my job description.'

The car drove off, sending up a swirl of burnt orange dust that settled on Littlemore's suit. He shook his head and inquired of a couple of gentlemen nearby if they knew the Willard Hotel. One of them pointed in a westerly direction. Littlemore set off toward the setting sun, which cast a long shadow behind him.

The next morning, Secretary Houston personally pinned the badge and administered the oath that made Littlemore a Special Agent of the United States Treasury. They were in the most luxurious office that Littlemore had ever seen – Houston's own office in the Treasury Building. Gilt-framed mirrors surmounted burnished marble fireplaces. Velvet-roped draperies hung at the windows. The ceiling was painted in a celestial theme.

'Where we stand, Lincoln stood,' said Houston, 'consulting his Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase.'

When instructed to swear to uphold the laws of the United States, Littlemore asked if he could make an exception in the case of the Volstead Act – the law mandating Prohibition – which Secretary

Houston did not find amusing. When taking the oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, Littlemores voice caught. He wished his father could have been there.

'Let me show you around, Special Agent Littlemore,' said Houston.

The divisions of the United States Treasury were surprisingly extensive. Houston pointed out with pride his gigantic bureau of internal revenue, his anti-counterfeiting unit, his bureau of engraving and printing, his bureau of alcohol enforcement, and, finally, an elegant spacious marble hall with a row of tellers along one wall, each behind an iron-grilled window. 'This is where the Treasury pays money on demand to anyone presenting a valid note. We call it the Cash Room. Show me all the money you have in your pockets, Littlemore.'

'Let's see. I got a three-cent nickel, a couple of dimes, and a fin.'

'Only the coins are money. Your five-dollar bill is not.'

'It's a fake?' asked Littlemore.

'Not fake, but not money. It's merely a note. A promise. You'll find the promise in the small print on the reverse, between Columbus and the Pilgrims. Read it – where it says "redeemable."'

'"This note,'" Littlemore read the inscription, '"is redeemable in gold on demand at the Treasury Department of the United States in the City of Washington, District of Columbia, or in gold or lawful money at any Federal Reserve Bank.'"

'Without those words,' said Houston, 'that note would be worthless paper. No shop owner would accept it. No bank would credit it. A five-dollar bill is a promise made by the United States to pay five dollars in gold to anyone presenting that note here in the United States Treasury in Washington, DC. Hence the Cash Room.'

'Not too many people cashing in,' said Littlemore. Only two customers were transacting business with the tellers.

'Which is as it should be.' Houston began walking again, leading Littlemore into a long corridor. 'No one has any reason to cash in – so long as everyone believes he can. But imagine if people began to fear we didn't have enough gold to pay off our notes. Do we have enough, do you suppose?'

'Don't we?'

'If all United States monetary obligations were called at once, the government would be as helpless and ruined as any bank in the middle of a panic. The system works on confidence. Picture a trickle of worried people coming here to cash in their notes. Picture the trickle turning into a crowd. Picture the crowd turning into a nation, stampeding to get their money before the nation's metal was exhausted. The government would have to declare bankruptcy. Lending would freeze. Factories would shut down. The entire economy would stop. What would happen next is anyone's guess. Possibly the states would revert to their former condition of autonomy.'

'I see why you want to keep a lid on the robbery, Mr Houston.'

'My point exactly. Here we are – this will be your office, Littlemore. Small, but you have your own telephone and access to all files of course. Here's the key to your desk. In it you'll find documents concerning the transfer of the gold from the Sub-Treasury in Manhattan to the Assay Office next door – how the bridge was built, who was involved, how it was planned, and so on. It's for you alone. Understood?'

'Yes, sir,' said Littlemore.

Houston lowered his voice: 'And I want a complete report on your meeting this afternoon with Senator Fall. Remember, Littlemore, you're my man in Washington, not his.'

On his way to the Senate Office Building that afternoon, Littlemore treated himself to a look at the Washington Monument. Adjacent to that great and solemn obelisk, he found to his surprise that the city had installed its Public Baths. From there Littlemore continued on the Mall – a straight, grassy, wide-open promenade dotted with important, majestic structures – toward the Capitol. He imagined lords and ladies strolling at a leisurely pace, with small dogs on leashes trotting behind them; in fact the Mall was empty.

At the corner of First and B Street – the address of the Senate Office Building – Littlemore saw only a small nondescript hotel at the weedy edges of the Capitol grounds. The detective was untroubled. He knew that in Washington's paradoxical cartography, there would be four different intersections where First Street meets B Street – each on a different side of the Capitol. Littlemore turned south and presently came to another corner of First and B. Here he found only a row of tumbledown wooden-frame houses, one attached to the next, with a dirt road in front of them. Garbage filled the road; flies attacked the garbage, and a whiff of unprocessed sewage sang in the nostrils. Negroes sat on the house porches. Not one white man, other than Littlemore, was to be seen. Mosquitoes abounded. Littlemore clapped one of the pests dead, near his face. When he separated his palms, he had framed between his hands the grand dome of the United States Capitol.

It was a good thing Littlemore had left the Treasury at three o'clock. He finally entered the rotunda of the Senate Office Building – which was three stories high, ringed by Corinthian columns, every wall gleaming with white marble and limestone, suffused with natural light from the glazed oculus at the apex of the richly coffered dome – at two minutes to four, just on time.

Albert B. Fall, United States Senator from New Mexico, was a hale man of sixty, tall and hard-drinking, with a drooping Western mustache white with age. Outdoors, he liked to sport a big-rimmed Western hat, mismatching his three-piece Eastern bow-tied suit. His chambers were lavish. When Littlemore was shown in, the Senator was working on his putting stroke, aiming golf balls at an empty milk bottle at least thirty feet away. The Senator's shots were missing badly.

'Special Agent James Littlemore,' declared Senator Fall without interrupting his practice. He had a large voice – the kind that could carry from an open-air rostrum or fill a legislative chamber. 'Glad to meet you, son. Heard a lot about you. What do you make of Washington?'

'Big offices, sir.'

'Big men get big offices. That's how it works. What's on your mind, boy?'

Littlemore was about to mention that the Senator had asked to see him, not the reverse, but the question turned out to be rhetorical.

'I'll tell you what's on your mind,' said Senator Fall. 'You're thinking why does this senator in this big office want to see me.'

'That's about right.'

'I'll tell you why. I want you to keep me posted on your investigation.'

Littlemore opened his mouth to answer.

'Don't you say anything, son,' interrupted Fall. 'I ain't put a question yet. I know what you'd say anyway. You'd say, "I'm sorry, Mr Senator, hut the investigation is confidential. You'll have to take that up with Secretary Milksop – I mean Houston.'"

There was silence in the room as Senator Fall lined up another putting stroke.

'Ain't I right?' said Fall.

'Am I supposed to answer now?' asked Littlemore.

'I'm right,' said Fall, slapping his golf ball a foot past the milk bottle into a bookcase. 'Damnation. That's it. I've had enough of this fool game. I don't play golf. Harding plays golf, so I figured I ought to give it a go. Well, he'll just have to play by himself. Mrs Cross? Get your pretty self in here.'

A door at the far end of the room opened. A tall blonde woman entered – the same attractive woman who had met Littlemore at Union Station the day before.

'Take this damn thing,' said the Senator, handing the woman his putter. 'And fix us a couple of drinks.'

'Yes, Mr Senator,' said Mrs Cross without a glance at Littlemore.

'So how's it feel 'to be a special agent, Special Agent Littlemore?' asked Fall, taking a seat behind his desk. 'Must feel pretty special.'

Littlemore wasn't sure how ironical this remark was intended to be. 'It's all right,' he said.

'Shouldn't be all right.' Fall leaned back in his reclining leather chair. 'Man of your age and your abilities shouldn't be content to be an agent. Got to think big. Look at that jackass Flynn. You're just as good as he is. Why shouldn't you be the director of the Bureau?'

'Whiskey, Mr Littlemore?' asked Mrs Cross.

'No, thank you, ma'am.'

Fall raised his eyebrows: 'You ain't dry?'

'No, sir.'

'Glad to hear it. Mrs Cross, give the man some whiskey. I got to tell you, Littlemore, becoming a Treasury Agent ain't the way to investigate an act of war.'

'I don't believe the bombing was an act of war, Mr Senator.'

Fall shook his head. 'Maybe it's because you back down, Littlemore. Maybe that's why you haven't made more of yourself. Men who back down don't rise up. Simple rule. Never fails. You were the only one to tell the truth about this bombing. You told Tom Lamont that the Morgan Bank was the terrorists' target. He didn't want to hear it, but you told him. Lamont was impressed; told me all about it. And Lamont ain't impressed by most. But all of a sudden you got religion. You dropped Lamont and hitched yourself up to Secretary Milksop instead. I wonder what made you change your tune.'

Mrs Cross handed a tumbler of whiskey to Senator Fall and offered another to Littlemore on a silver tray. He didn't take it. Into the Senator's glass of whiskey she poured a dollop of milk straight from a bottle.

'For the stomach,' explained Senator Fall. 'One thing I hate to see is a good man back down. Knuckle under to the people at the top. Been fighting it my whole life. Take a seat, for Christ's sake.'

Littlemore remained standing. 'Does every senator keep a firearm in his office, Mr Fall?'

'What's that?'

'You've got a pistol in your second drawer.'

Fall crossed his arms, then smiled broadly. 'Now how'd you know that? Mrs Cross, did you tell Agent Littlemore about my gun?'

'Would I do something like that, Mr Senator?' asked Mrs Cross.

'You surely would.'

'Well, I didn't.'

'How'd you know that, son?'

'You got shell packing paper next to your wastebasket, Senator Fall, which tells me you were recently loading a weapon. On your right thumb is an oil stain, from cleaning it. You're not carrying, so it's somewhere in your office. Desk's the most likely place. Second drawer's slightly open.'

'If I'm not Sam Hill's mother,' said Senator Fall. 'That's damn good, Littlemore. What else do you know?'

'I know I'm not crazy about politicians telling the rest of the country we can't drink while they got brand-new bottles of the stuff on their shelves. And I know I don't back down. I'll take that whiskey, ma'am, thank you.'

Littlemore drained the tumbler and returned it to her.

'Well, well, well,' said Fall. 'Looks like we got a man here after all, Mrs Cross. All right, Agent Littlemore, let me put my cards on the table. Houston's got you convinced you're dealing with a robbery. Ain't I right?'

Littlemore said nothing.

'Oh, I know all about the gold,' Fall went on. 'General Palmer told me about it. So let me see if I have this straight. The bombing was a robbery, so the nation's not at war. That it? I'll tell you what – we Western folks must be too plain, because I don't follow that Washington logic. There was a raid on the nation's treasure, on top of an attack on our biggest bank, on top of a massacre of the American people – and that means we're not at war?'

'The robbery looks like an inside job, Mr Senator,' said Littlemore. 'So no, it doesn't look like we're at war.'

'Let me tell you something, Agent Littlemore,' said Fall. 'The one thing, the one good thing, that Washington does for a man – other than setting him temporarily free from the Missus – is that it makes him an American. I ain't a New Mexican here, and you ain't a New Yorker. We're Americans. You can open your eyes now, see the big picture, do something for your country.'

'I don't follow you, Mr Senator.'

'Look around the world today. It's Bolshevik terrorists everywhere. They took down the Tsar. They took over Germany. Hungary, Austria. They're crawling all over France and Spain and Italy. Lenin says he's coming for us. Nobody listens. They already got Mexico, right next door. Now how do the bolshies work? Stand up and fight against you? No. Reason with you? No. They infiltrate. They bomb – and they bribe. That's their means. That's what they did in Russia, and it sure worked there. That's what they're doing here.'

'You're saying the bombers were foreign, but they paid off someone in our government to help them?'

'You don't think the Feds can be bribed?'

'To help foreigners bomb us? That would be treason, Mr Fall.'

'You got no idea what this town is like, Agent Littlemore. Gaudy and statesmanlike on the outside, rotten to the core on the inside. Ten grand will buy you a US congressman. We senators are a little pricier. Everybody in this town's got an angle. Everybody's looking to make out. Even Mrs Cross here is looking to make out, aren't you, honey?'

Fall extended his empty shot glass in Mrs Cross's direction. She refilled it – and topped it off with milk. He drank it, grimacing.

'This is war, Littlemore. We're under attack. They blew us to hell on September sixteenth. They blew us to hell!' Fall slammed his fist on his desk; the sound echoed between the bookcases. He lowered his voice: 'And they'll do it again. Why wouldn't they?'

'You think Russia is behind the bombing, Senator?' asked Littlemore.

'You bet I do. Who else would dare to make war against the United States of America? They know we sent our army into Siberia last year. Why, they practically got the right to attack us back. What other country has a motive? What other country would want to bring us down?'

'I don't know, Mr Fall.'

'Well, I do,' said Fall. 'Listen to me. I'm going to tell you how history should go, son – how the history of the rest of this century should go. We got a million-plus army of soldiers, trained, ready to be mobilized right now. We could take down this Soviet dictatorship. This is the time. This is the only time. They just got whipped in Poland. They got a civil war on their hands. The Russian people don't want a dictatorship. Why, Lenin's got fifty, sixty thousand people in jail already just for speaking up against Bolshevism. The Russian people want freedom. We can help them. And if we don't, son, nobody will be able to stop this red juggernaut. We got a little window here, and it's closing fast. These communists don't just want Russia. They're mean, nasty sons of bitches – you mark my words – and they want to rule the world. That's right: they want to rule the world. They hate freedom. They hate Christ. They will fill the world with darkness for a hundred years. And there ain't no one in this government doing a damn thing about it. Wilson's a cripple. Only thing he cared about was his League of Nations. Palmer's on his way out. Bill Flynn's an idiot. Houston's a moneychanger. Who's protecting the country, goddamn it? Who's protecting the world?'

The Senator was roused again. His fist shook in the air. The sound of applause – a single pairs of hands, slowly clapping – surprised Littlemore. It was Mrs Cross.

'You cut that out,' Fall said to her, calming down. 'She thinks I take myself too seriously. Maybe I do. Here's the point. You want to get somewhere in this town? You got to hitch yourself to the right horse. Warren Harding's going to be elected president in three weeks. Houston's not going to be secretary of shee-it after that. I am. You want to do something for your country? Houston only cares about the gold. I care about freedom. I care about whether our citizens are going to be able to walk their streets in peace or get blown up by our enemies. That jackass Flynn with his Italian anarchists! It was the Russians, damn them, and if we can prove it, the country will go to war. That's why I need you, Littlemore. If you show Houston evidence – hard evidence – proving the Russians did it, know what he'll do? Nothing. He'll bury it. Just let me in on at that evidence if you find it. That's all I ask. Will you do that?'

Littlemore had not answered when they heard a knock at the main door to the Senator's chamber. The door opened, revealing a harried secretary and a well-dressed man behind her, straining to get past her. The woman had managed only to say, 'I'm sorry, Mr Senator, I told him you were busy,' when the man, completely bald except for a tuft of hair behind each of his ears, pushed brazenly and clumsily past her.

It was Mr Arnold Brighton, owner of factories, oil wells, and mines, who had contributed twenty-five thousand dollars to the Marie Curie Radium Fund.

'My people are being run out of Mexico,' declared Brighton without introduction. 'They're Americans, Fall. They're in danger.'

'Day late, nickel short, Brighton,' said Fall. 'Make an appointment. Get in line.'

'I tried to make an appointment,' complained Brighton, sounding genuinely aggrieved. 'They said you were busy.'

'I am busy,' shouted Fall. 'We're electing a president here, in case you haven't noticed.'

'I guess I'll be leaving,' said Littlemore.

'Wait just a minute, Littlemore,' said Fall. 'We didn't finish.'

'Is that Detective Littlemore?' asked Brighton. 'I've been meaning to thank you, Detective. Without your help, I – I – what was it again? Oh, my. I've forgotten. What was it I wanted to thank Detective Littlemore for?'

'How the hell would we know what you were going to thank him for?' roared Fall.

'Where's Samuels?' asked Mr Brighton plaintively. 'Samuels is my assistant. He would remember. Does anyone know where Samuels is?'

Fall seemed to exercise a great power of self-restraint in order to lower his voice: 'I'm in the middle of an important conversation, Brighton. Step outside and talk to my secretary.'

'But this Obregon fellow is taking over my mines in Mexico,' said Brighton. 'The oil wells will be next. Everything. He's sending in soldiers – with guns, for heaven's sakes! These are American workingmen. There have been beatings and death threats. You've got to do something. I know I didn't give money to Harding. It's not my fault. Everyone told me the other man, Cox, was going to win. I'll give now. Whatever amount you ask. Tell me where to send it. Just drop a few bombs on Mexico City – perhaps on their capitol and in the nicer parts of town – I'm sure they'll see the light.'

Fall took a long time before answering: 'You turn my stomach, Brighton. Know that? I ain't for sale. The Republican Party ain't for sale. The US army ain't for sale. I'm not going to let Harding get bogged down in Mexico, and I'm not going to use the army to take care of your business.'

'You won't help Americans in Mexico?' asked Brighton.

'They're your employees,' replied Fall. 'You help them.'

Brighton looked confused, at a loss. 'Is that all?'

'You bet that's all. Now git.' Fall took Brighton by the arm and ushered him into the other room, from which Littlemore heard Brighton asking if anyone knew where Samuels was.

'I'll be going too, Mr Fall,' said Littlemore when the Senator returned.

'I asked you a question, Littlemore,' replied Fall. 'Will you show me your evidence if you tie the bombing to the Russians?'

'I can't promise that, Mr Senator. But I'll think about what you said.'

On the steps of the Senate Office Building, Mrs Cross – seeing Littlemore out – said, 'Well, didn't you charm the Senator?'

'Is that right?' asked Littlemore.

'That's right. You stood up to him. He likes that. You could go far in this town. If you learned how to dress.'

'Something wrong with how I'm dressed?'

She reached out and fixed his jacket collar, one wing of which was saluting rather than lying down flat. 'What party are you, Agent Littlemore?' she asked. 'Are you a Democrat, like Secretary Houston? Or a Republican, like Senator Fall?'

'I don't belong to any party, ma'am.'

'No? Well, who do you like, Cox or Harding?'

'Haven't decided. My wife likes Debs.'

'How interesting,' said Mrs Cross. 'I wouldn't mention that again, if I were you.'

'Which – that I have a wife, or that she's for Debs?'

'That depends on whether you're talking to a woman or a man. Goodbye, New York. 'The well-heeled Mrs Cross walked in what might have been described as a businesslike sashay, the graceful motions of which, when viewed from behind, defied any man, even a married man, to turn away. Littlemore watched her disappear liltingly into the Senate Office Building.

No sooner had Mrs Cross sashayed out of sight than a man's voice called out, 'Detective Littlemore, is that you? Samuels was out here all along, waiting for me.' It was Brighton, standing next to a luxurious car with a closed passenger compartment and a roof that stuck out over the driver. Brighton seemed to consider his private secretary's whereabouts a cause of public concern. 'Why would he a do a thing like that?'

'I'm guessing it's because you told him to, Mr Brighton,' said Littlemore, descending the steps.

'Really?' Brighton stuck his head below the protruding roof. When he reemerged, he said, 'By Jove, you're right. I did ask him to. How did you know?'

'Wild guess.'

'It's so fortunate I ran into you. Samuels reminded me what I wanted to thank you for. It was for Samuels himself. Your report cleared him of wrongdoing after that unfortunate shooting of the mad girl. You saved me no end of trouble. I couldn't manage without Samuels, you know – not for a day.'

'Just doing my job, Mr Brighton,' said Littlemore. 'The girl had a knife. The witnesses said she attacked first. Your man acted lawfully.'

'How is she?'

'Still in the hospital. Been there ever since she was shot.'

'Not her,' said Brighton. 'I meant Miss Rousseau. Such a lovely girl. I nearly fainted when that madwoman assaulted her.'

'Miss Colette's fine, so far as I know.'

'Is she poor?'

'Poor?' asked Littlemore.

'I'm not like you, Detective. No woman will ever fall in love with me for my personal qualities. My father told me so many years ago, after I took over the business. I'm looking for a girl who will marry me for my money.'

'I know a couple hundred girls like that.'

'Really?' Brighton blinked as if he couldn't believe the detective's good luck. 'You couldn't introduce me to them, could you?'

'Sure. My wife loves to match-make.'

'How strange,' Brighton reflected. 'The only girl I can think of at present is Miss Rousseau. So comely. Do you know where she went? She promised to come to Washington with me, but Mrs Meloney says she simply vanished.'

'Couldn't tell you.' This was doubly true. Littlemore neither knew where Colette was, nor would he have told Brighton if he did.

'That other creature – the madwoman.' Brighton shuddered. 'I've never seen anything so hideous. Did she tell anyone what's wrong with her?'

'No. She's been unconscious since the shooting.'

'How can I thank you for Samuels? What about five thousand dollars?'

'I'm sorry?'

'His freedom is worth much more than that to me, I promise you.'

'You can't give me money in exchange for police work,' said Littlemore.

'I don't see the logic in that,' replied Brighton, removing a thick wallet from his breast pocket and withdrawing a single large-sized Federal Reserve note with a blue seal and a picture of James Madison on it. 'Where's the incentive to do good work if a man can't be rewarded for it? Surely you could use five thousand dollars.'

Littlemore took a deep breath through his nostrils, thinking of his daughter Lily. 'I can't take it, Mr Brighton. I can't take a dime.'

'How absurd. Well, what about a ride? At least I can offer you a ride. I'm on my way to the train station. Can I take you somewhere?'

Littlemore, who was going to the station himself, accepted. When Brighton discovered that Littlemore too was destined for New York that evening, he beamed and insisted they travel together.

Samuels pulled the limousine up at a loading dock in the rear of Union Station. Brighton explained that this was the only way to get the automobile onto the train.

'They let you bring your car onto the train?' asked Littlemore as they stepped out of the vehicle.

'I can bring anything I like,' answered Brighton. 'It's my train. I have a parlor car, a bedroom car, a billiards car, a kitchen car, and a car car – hah, hah – a car car, isn't that good? We'll have great fun, Detective. No one ever rides with me.'

'Afraid I can't, Mr Brighton.'

'What? Why not?'

'If I ride your private train,' said Littlemore, 'I'm accepting a pretty fancy service from you. It's like you're buying something for me.'

'But what good is my money if I'm not allowed to buy things with it?'

'Some things you can't.'

'That's ludicrous,' said Brighton. 'The Commissioner of Police, Mr Enright, has taken my train. The Attorney General has taken it. Senator Harding rode it three weeks ago.'

'That's different.'

'Why?'

'Because -' Littlemore began before interrupting himself. 'I don't know why, to tell you the truth. But that's the way it is.'

'I have an idea. You could you do extra work for me – you know, when you're off-duty. That can't possibly be against the law, can it?'

'No,' Littlemore acknowledged reluctantly. 'A lot of the men moonlight.'

'There we are then! You'll do something useful for me, and I'll pay you five thousand dollars for it. What do you say? The ride to New York will be your interview. We'll figure out what service you can render me. I'm not sure what; Samuels is so good at everything. He used to be a Pinkerton man, you know. But there must be some valuable service you can perform.'

Littlemore watched Samuels steer the limousine up a wide ramp. 'I guess I might be able to do something,' said the detective.

'What about my people in Mexico?' asked Brighton. 'You know it was quite true what I told Senator Fall. I own hundreds of thousands of very productive acres in Mexico, and their government is trying to take it all away from me.'

'I don't doubt it, Mr Brighton.'

'Didn't I hear Senator Fall say you work for the federal government now? Perhaps you can help me with Mexico. Confiscation is theft, you know – outright theft. Could you send some federal policemen in?'

'Listen, Mr Brighton. First of all, I got no jurisdiction over Mexico. Second, whatever I do for you, it can't have anything to do with my government work. Third, I'm not taking any money today I'll just ride up to New York with you, and we'll see if we can figure out something you need that I could do for you. Okay?'

'I know: Let's play billiards,' declared Brighton. 'Come on – it's only good when the train's at rest. Samuels is bunk at billiards. I could pay you for being my billiards partner!'

The Sixth Avenue Elevated rattled by a half block away, shaking the floors and the bed in which Littlemore and his wife were lying.

'What's the matter?' asked Betty, seeing her husband's open eyes.

'Nothing.'

'It's after two, Jimmy.'

'I feel like I took my first bribe.'

'You mean because you rode in Mr Brighton's train? You're the only policeman in New York who would think there was anything wrong with that.'

'He offered me five thousand dollars. Enough for Lily. He put it in my hand.'

'Did you take it?'

'No.'

The noise of the train receded into the distance. The bedroom was completely silent.

'What did he want you to do?' asked Betty at last.

'Nothing. He wanted to pay me for something I already did.'

'He offered you five thousand dollars for nothing?'

'It was for police work,' said Littlemore. 'I'm sorry, Betty. I couldn't take it.'

'You listen to me, James Littlemore,' said Betty, sitting up. 'Don't you take any dirty money. Not for me, not for Lily, not for anything.'

Littlemore shut his eyes. 'Thanks,' he said.

Betty lay down again. A long while passed.

'Did I make enough of myself, Betty?' asked Littlemore.

'Enough? Nobody works harder than you. You put food on our table every day. You got us an apartment on Fourteenth Street.'

'Mayor Mitchel was mayor of New York City at thirty-four,' said Littlemore. 'Teddy Roosevelt was Police Commissioner at thirty-eight. I can't even afford to fix my own daughter's hearing.'

'They had famous fathers, Jimmy. Your father -' Betty hesitated – 'well, you did everything on your own.'

Littlemore didn't speak.

'And you're still going places,' said Betty. 'Look at this new job of yours. None of the girls have a husband like mine. You should see the looks in their eyes. You're like a god. Captain Littlemore of the New York Police Department. Special Agent Littlemore of the United States Treasury.'

'Like a god,' said Littlemore, smiling, wiping his eyes in the darkness. 'That's me all right.'

The morning papers confirmed Brighton's complaints. The President-elect of Mexico, General Alvaro Obregon, had ordered troops into American-owned silver mines. He was threatening to do the same with the much more lucrative oil wells, claiming that Americans had bought their subsoil rights through illegal, corrupt transactions with the pre-revolutionary regime.

The American Society for Psychical Research had a perfectly unspiritual office on East Twenty-third Street in Manhattan, lined with scientific publications, most prominently its own. No signs of the occult were anywhere in evidence. Dr Walter Franklin Prince, the acting director, was equally mundane in appearance. He was a large- faced, affable man of about sixty with a receding hairline, and he smoked a pipe with an unusually large bowl.

'Thanks for making time, Dr Prince,' said Littlemore the next morning, shaking Prince's hand. 'Friend of mine told me you were the outfit to talk to about supernatural stuff.'

'Delighted to assist,' replied Prince. 'My secretary, Miss Tubby, tells me you doubt whether Mr Edwin Fischer really could have seen into the future.'

'That's right, but I'm listening.'

'Certainly he could have. Premonitions of disaster are commonplace.

In 1902, I myself dreamed in precise detail of a train wreck four hours before it occurred. In 1912, Mr J. C. Middleton, having purchased tickets for the maiden voyage of the Titanic, dreamed two nights in a row of the ship's foundering and of its passengers drowning in the cold sea. He refused to travel and lived.'

'Didn't happen to tell anybody about his dreams before the ship went down, did he?'

'I wouldn't mention it otherwise. I have no truck with after-the-fact clairvoyants. Mr Middleton was so alarmed that he immediately told his wife and several friends. Their affidavits are in my drawer. I've been looking into the Fischer case myself, and based on the evidence, I'm convinced his premonition was authentic.'

'Fischer says it came to him "out of the air,'" said Littlemore. 'That make any sense to you?'

'He could not have expressed it more felicitously. When we see a twinkling in the night sky, Captain, what are we seeing?'

'Um – I'm going to say a star.'

'We're seeing the past. The universe as it existed centuries ago. The past surrounds us at every moment, although we can rarely see it. So too with the future. It's all around us, in the form of waves or perturbations quite invisible to the naked eye – like radio waves, actually. Many of us fleetingly detect these currents, for example in the hair on the back of our necks. In time, science will discover their molecular structure. But there can be little doubt about their source.'

'Their source?'

'Death, Captain,' said Dr Prince. 'Death releases this energy into the air. If a true catastrophe is looming, the disturbance becomes such that a sensitive individual may become highly troubled by it. He may be aware of exactly when and where it will occur. He may see an aura around people who are soon to die. Or he may see images of the disaster beforehand, as I did, and as Mr Middleton did. That is what happened to Edwin Fischer.'

Littlemore nodded. He didn't accept, but he didn't judge. 'Can they ever know more?' he asked. 'Like who's behind it?'

'I've never heard of that. There is evidence that the souls of the murdered, reached in the spirit world, can tell you who killed them, but I know of no cases documenting such foreknowledge in the living. Are you interested in contacting a medium? I have a very gifted one.'

'I'll take a rain check on that, Dr Prince.'

'Would it be helpful to know when the attack was conceived?'

'Could be very helpful,' said Littlemore. 'You think Fischer might know?'

'In cases of deliberate slaying, premonitions almost never come before the murderer has formed the intention to kill. Often the initial premonition will come at that very moment. Ask Mr Fischer when he first had his precognition.'

'Thanks, Dr Prince – I may do that.'

In the Astor Hotel, in mid-October 1920, an increasingly belligerent Director Flynn of the Federal Bureau of Investigation held yet another press conference. Flynn's repeated claims of imminent prosecution had not worked to his advantage. The case had not cracked. No one had been charged. An air of skepticism and defeated expectations had begun to infect several gentlemen of the press.

As Flynn saw it, the fault was not his. It lay rather with the newspapers, for reporting his setbacks. Every time one of his leads came to nothing, the newspapers made a story of it, which wasn't the kind of behavior Flynn expected from loyal Americans. Embarrassing the federal government's efforts to defeat its enemies was a criminal offense. That's why Eugene Debs was in jail. Flynn could have hauled any one of these reporters into custody. He knew what they were saying to each other on the telephone – because his agents were listening in. He felt they owed their continuing and undeserved liberty entirely to his largesse.

'Each and every one of you boys,' said Flynn, 'ought to be on your knees in thanks to me. But I ain't going into that today. Instead I'm going to sell more newspapers for you. We got it all sewed up now. Here's your story: yesterday afternoon, my office received information establishing the identity and whereabouts of the political prisoners, which you goons were too busy writing about mental cases to even realize you didn't know who they were.'

Pencils hung frozen in midair as comprehension sought in vain to work its way through this declaration.

'Don't you remember nothing, you saps?' asked Flynn helpfully. "'Free the political prisoners" – that's what the anarchist circulars said. Well now, just who exactly are these political prisoners? Figure that out, and you bust the whole case wide open.'

'But last time you said Tresca did it, Chief,' said a reporter. 'Then Tresca gives a public speech in Brooklyn, and you don't even bring him in. What gives?'

'Why, I ought to show you what gives,' rejoined Flynn, neck straining at the buttoned collar of his white shirt. 'I never said Tresca did it. All's I said was he was a suspect. Got that?'

'Director Flynn,' said another man, less disheveled than the others, 'my readers want me to tell you that you're a fine American.'

'Thank you, Tommy. I appreciate that. You're a fine American.'

'My readers,' continued Tommy, 'feel a lot safer since you began rounding up the foreigners who are trying to take over this city.'

'Now that's how to be a newspaperman,' said Flynn. 'Listen good, the rest of you. Once we get our hands on the political prisoners, which we already got our hands on, we'll have this whole bombing wrapped up like a Christmas present. That's your story. Signed, sealed, and delivered. You print that.'

On Friday, October 15, Littlemore returned to Police Headquarters on Centre Street to pack up a few things. His men Roederheusen and Stankiewicz stopped in. They carried their hats as if attending a funeral.

'Spanky,' said Littlemore, shaking each by the hand. 'Stanky'

'We're going to miss you, Cap.'

'Knock it off,' said Littlemore. 'Now don't forget. The alley is the key – the alley between the Treasury and Assay Office. Look for people who ran into the street on September sixteenth, or went to their window, and saw a big truck carrying a massive load out of that alleyway onto Pine Street. That's how the bombers made their getaway.'

'Why would the bombers be in a truck?' asked Stankiewicz.

'Carrying a load of what?' asked Roederheusen.

'Can't tell you yet, boys,' said Littlemore. 'But find out what that truck looked like and where it went, and you can break this case. You know where to reach me.'

The officers put on their hats unenthusiastically. 'Say, Cap,' said Roederheusen on his way out, 'you asked me to locate that Mexican guy – Pesqueira? The consulate says he's gone. Left for Washington last week.'

'Not interested anymore, but thanks.' Littlemore strode down the corridor to Commissioner Enright's office, knowing it was likely to be the last time. He rapped at Enright's door and, when a voice from inside gave him permission, entered.

'Captain Littlemore,' said Enright from his desk. 'Not captain much longer, eh?'

'Already got sworn in down in Washington, Mr Enright. Just packing my things.'

The Commissioner nodded. 'I knew your father, Littlemore.'

'Yes, sir.'

'A good man. Imperfect, as we are all are. But a good man.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'Your badge, Captain. And your weapon.'

Littlemore placed his badge on Enright's desk. It hurt so much he almost couldn't let' it go. 'The gun's mine,' he said.

'Well, I'm not happy to do the formalities,' said Enright, 'but by the power vested in me as chief of the New York Police Department, I hereby revoke your commission. Mr Littlemore, you're no longer a member of the Force.' Littlemore said nothing. 'Do us proud, my boy,' said Enright.

Chapter Thirteen

After a day at sea, an ocean liner steaming out of New York becomes its own and only point of human reference. No other vessels interrupt the vast waters. Under a cloudless morning sky, Colette and Younger strolled the upper deck, the swell unsteady enough to make her accept his arm. The ship's engines set up a dull, churning roar behind them.

'What did they want with me?' she asked.

'The redheads or the kidnappers?'

'All of them.'

'The more I think about it,' said Younger, 'the more I think the note we got at the hotel – the note from Amelia – was a trap. Bait. We thought Amelia never came back to the hotel the next morning. But perhaps she did, with the kidnappers.'

'Why?'

'Maybe it's their business – kidnapping girls, selling them.'

'Selling them?'

'We have a term for it: white slavery. Perhaps they were going to lure you somewhere; Amelia would prey on your compassion, telling you she needed your help. They expected you to be alone. Instead I was with you. So they changed plans. They followed us to Wall Street. Amelia was caught in the bombing. But her friends kept watch, and when you went back to the hotel, they took you.'

'Why me?'

'Because you're a foreigner. No family in America, no connections. Young and beautiful would be further qualifications.'

'I am not beautiful. How would they know I was a foreigner with no family?'

'How did they know you lived in New Haven? Or that you were going to Hamburg? One thing is certain: they have money. Enough to investigate people.'

Unexpectedly, she rested her head on his shoulder. 'At least we're safe on this ship. I can feel it. I wish we never had to reach Europe.'

Younger had made inquiries with the ship's bursar, from whom he learned that he'd been the last one to buy tickets. Colette, it seemed, was right. The ship was safe; no one had followed them aboard. 'We don't have to get off when the ship gets to Bremen,' he suggested. 'We could stay on for the return voyage. At New York, we could stay on again. Go back and forth forever.'

'Don't say anything else,' she answered, closing her eyes. 'I'm going to dream about that.'

He looked at her lovely face: 'Yes, if I were running a white slavery ring, you'd be at the top of my list.'

Later that morning, Younger emptied onto the deck the contents of a large sack he'd brought along with his luggage. There was a baseball, a bat, a jumble of wooden pegs and metal plates, and assembly instructions. A half-hour later, he had constructed a batting tee – a freestanding pedestal for holding a baseball in place, about waist high, so that a batter can practice his swings at it. Younger then fashioned a bag of netting around the baseball, tying off this bag with a long cord of rope borrowed from a seaman. The other end of the rope Younger secured to a winch. He then set the bagged ball atop the tee and gave Luc a lesson in hitting. After each swing, they retrieved the baseball, soaking, by reeling in the rope.

Soon a good number of male passengers wanted a go, doffing their hats and undressing to their shirtsleeves to take their cracks. Naturally, the handful of other boys on the voyage were eager to try as well. Younger made them ask permission first from Luc, who solemnly granted it, and who for the rest of the journey thereby became an indispensable member of the little gang of boys, despite his muteness.

Of all the men and boys who had a go at the batter's tee that day, Younger hit the most towering drives. But the next morning several of the ship's seamen joined in. One of these was a muscular swab who had played for the Brooklyn Robins during the war and who, taking his shirt off altogether, packed so Ruthian a wallop into his first swing that the rope was not long enough. The netting broke; the ball was lost. Younger tried several substitutes – an orange, a globe of wood cut by the ship's carpenter, a golf ball lent to them by another passenger – but there's nothing quite like a baseball, and that was the end of that.

As the days of oceangoing passed one to the next, Younger found he couldn't make any further headway with Colette. His relations with her were intimate enough, but only in a friendly way. She was affectionate, but distant. And she became more so as they drew nearer to Europe.

Sometimes he would catch her staring out to sea into a future he couldn't penetrate. Or was it a past – a memory of falling in love with a devout, ailing soldier in Paris, to whom she had given her heart, and whom she hadn't seen for more than two years?

You're his hero, you know,' she said to him one day, coming out of such a reverie.

'Whose?'

'Luc's.'

'Am I?' said Younger. 'Who's yours?'

'I have two: Madame Curie and my father. I'm lucky that way. The Germans killed my father when he was still a hero to me – fearless, strong, noble in every way. Even the Germans couldn't take that from me. But Luc barely remembers him. I used to try to remind him about Mother and Father – tell him stories of Father's strength and bravery.

But he wouldn't listen. He isn't even curious. That's what he really needs – a father.'

'And you're doing your best to find him one?'

She didn't answer.

'Do you really think he loves you?' Younger went on. 'Heinrich, I mean.'

'Hans.'

'Heinrich hasn't written you a single letter in two years. That doesn't sound like love to me.'

'It doesn't matter whether he's written me.'

'You mean you love him regardless? You don't. I'm sorry, but you don't. If you loved him, you'd be thinking of one thing only: how he'll react when he sees you. You'd be in a panic to know whether he still cares for you. You'd be looking in mirrors. You also wouldn't concede that he hasn't written you. You'd tell yourself that he wrote to the hospital in Paris, but that you never received the letters. Instead you say it doesn't matter.'

She didn't answer.

'Is he that handsome?' asked Younger. 'Or did you give yourself to him, and now you think you have to marry him on that account?'

Colette looked away: 'Don't talk about him anymore. Please.'

'What do you owe him? You nursed the man when he was sick, but you act like he was the one who saved you. As if you owed him your life.'

'You can't understand what I owe him,' she said. She looked at him: 'Do you want me to say I love you more than him? That I'll give him up for you? I won't. I'm sorry. You shouldn't love me. You should just – leave me alone.' She got up and went to her cabin and didn't return.

On the last night of their voyage, as he contemplated the unfathomable force drawing Colette to her soldier from thousands of miles away, Younger tried to decide which was the greater illusion – the false motion of the stars, which seemed over the course of a night slowly

to cross the sky, or the false motionlessness of the earth, which was in reality soaring around the sun at unthinkable speed.

How could it be that a young man whom Colette had known for only a few months exerted such power over her, or that this French girl exerted such power over him – Younger – against his will, against his reason, against his judgment? He seemed to be in orbit around her, circling her, closing on her, then falling away, always with some final, unbridgeable distance between them. Does the earth find its orbit a cause of unending torment?

The Amityville Sanitarium on Long Island was spotless and white and healthful, but Edwin Fischer, its newest resident, did not seem content. Gone was the gregarious good cheer so conspicuous when he was taken into custody in New York City a month earlier.

'How are they treating you, Fischer?' asked Littlemore, taking a seat in the visiting room.

'The Popes have always been against me,' replied Fischer. 'Are you Roman Catholic, Officer?'

'Catholic? My wife is.'

'None of the Popes has ever been a true Catholic. They pretend, of course, but it's always been a lie. They are using their powers against me. Why did you come here?'

'Funny – I'm asking myself that same question right now.'

'Shall I tell you the reason the Popes wish to keep me confined?'

'Because you're crazy?'

'They don't believe I'm an agent of the United States Secret Service.'

'You're not.'

'Why do you say that?' Fischer looked genuinely hurt. 'I resent that very much. Are you a Secret Serviceman?'

'No.'

'Are you the Secretary of the Treasury?'

'Why?' asked Littlemore.

'If you were, you'd be in charge of the Secret Service.'

'I don't think so.'

'You don't think you're the Secretary of the Treasury?' replied Fischer. 'Most people are sure, one way or the other.'

'I happen to work for the Secretary of the Treasury, and I don't think he's in charge of the Secret Service.'

'Then he's an impostor. I know why you're here.'

'Is that right?'

'You're here to get me out of this place.'

'No, I'm not.'

'Yes, you are. And to ask me when I first received my premonition of the Wall Street bombing.'

Littlemore sat up.

'I'm correct?' asked Fischer.

'Son of a gun. How'd you know that?'

'Were you at the train station when the police brought me from Canada, Captain?'

'No. So when was it – your first premonition?'

'I love train stations. Whenever I go to a new city, I wander around the station for hours. It makes me feel at home. Grand Central Terminal is like a second home to me.'

'Great. When was your first premonition?'

'You'll do something about the Popes?'

'I'll do what I can.'

'The end of July, I think. I know it was before the East-West matches. It was right after I decided not to go to Washington. You must know I'm an adviser to Mr Wilson?'

'That would be President Wilson, I'm guessing.'

'In 1916, I advised Mr Wilson that if he didn't stop the war, many would die. That's how I got to be a Secret Service agent. He wished to meet with me, but his aides wouldn't permit it. Doubtless he regrets that decision profoundly today.'

'Sure he does. So who do you think was behind the bombing, Fischer? Who did it?'

'Anarchists, of course. Bolsheviks.'

'Are you positive?'

'Absolutely.'

'How do you know?'

'I read it in the papers.'

A nurse interrupted them, to take Mr Fischer back to his room.

Their train slipped with a satisfied shriek into Vienna's Westbahnhof on a mid-October evening. The Austrian trains, once the pride of an empire, were shells of their former selves. They ran on half rations of coal – the other half having been sold off by corrupt officials and needy conductors. Chandeliers and decorated paneling had been ripped away, evidently by thieves.

A single cab was waiting outside the station under a bright half- moon – an elegant two-horse carriage. Although Younger sat next to Colette, she kept her distance, facing away from him and looking out at Vienna. Luc sat across from them, one suitcase under his legs and another beside him. It was a lovely, old-world night. In the distance, over the roofs of handsome buildings, the electric lights of the Riesenrad the giant Ferris wheel of the Prater, Vienna's famous amusement park – described a high slow arc in the air. The wind carried strains of a faraway waltz and merry laughter.

'Vienna is gay,' said Colette – wistfully, Younger thought.

Colette had spoken in French. The coachman answered in the same language: 'Yes, we are gay, Mademoiselle. It is our nature. Even during the war we were gay. And unlike the last time you were here, we are no longer eating our dogs.'

The driver presented his card to them. He was the very same nobleman – Oktavian Ferdinand Graf Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau – who had taken them to their hotel on their first stay in Vienna. But on his card, the words Graf and von, indications of his illustrious birth, had been crossed out.

'Titles of nobility have been abolished,' he explained. 'We're not allowed them even on our cards. Yes, things are improving. Things are certainly improving.'

They heard a far-off keening behind them, followed by a thunderous crash.

'What was that?' asked Colette, starting almost out of her seat.

'It's nothing, Mademoiselle,' replied the coachman. 'It comes from the Wienerwald, the Vienna woods, the loveliest woods in the world. They are chopping down its trees.'

'At this hour?' said Younger. 'Who?'

'Everyone, Monsieur. It's illegal, but people have no choice. There is no more coal to burn. Only wood. They go at night to avoid arrest. When winter comes, many will have no heat at all. You've come from Paris?'

'New York,' said Younger.

'Is Monsieur American?'

Younger allowed that he was.

'I beg your pardon; I thought you were French. Then you must accept this ride with my compliments. Austria owes you its deepest thanks.'

Younger was surprised at this offer and said so.

'A defeated country does not ordinarily express gratitude toward its foe?' asked the coachman. 'It's our children I'm thanking you for. Your relief packages are still their chief source of food. Do you know Mr Stockton – your charge d'affaires? I drove him to the station last month. He had just received a letter from the Chief Justice of our Supreme Court, asking if the judges could have a relief package too.'

'What will happen,' asked Colette, 'to the children if they have no heat this winter?'

'They'll die, I imagine, many of them. Here we are – 19 Berggasse. I hope Dr Freud is well.'

Younger, letting himself out and extending his hand to Colette, raised an eyebrow at their exceedingly knowledgeable coachman.

'When foreigners visit the Berggasse,' explained the driver, 'there can be only one reason.'

Younger asked if he would be so kind as to wait for them while they called on the Freuds. Oktavian said he would be most willing.

It was Freud's wife's sister, Minna Bernays, who answered the door to the second-floor apartment. Although they were expected, Miss Bernays wouldn't let them in, explaining that Dr Freud and his wife, Martha, had retired early. She was asking if they could come back tomorrow when a deep male voice intervened, declaring his retirement to be much exaggerated.

Their greetings were cordial. Much was made of Luc being a full head taller. 'Well, Minna,' observed Freud, 'Martha was mistaken, as I predicted she would be.' To Younger and Colette, he explained: 'My wife was certain the two of you would be married before the year was out.'

'The year's not over yet,' said Younger.

'She meant 1919,' Freud replied drily.

'Then tell her there is still hope for 1920,' said Younger.

'I've given you no reason to hope, Stratham,' Colette rebuked him. 'Not for any year.'

Younger, stung, resolved to make light of it: 'In that case I'll schedule the wedding for midnight December thirty-first,' he said, 'which doesn't belong to any year.'

Colette turned to Minna Bernays and said, 'He's hopeless.'

'First she chides you for hoping,' Freud replied to Younger, 'then for being hopeless. Women – what do they want?'

Sigmund Freud looked his age, sunk deep in an armchair in his study. A furrow knit his white brows into a scowl. His usually frenetic chow, Jofi, curled sympathetically at the master's feet. They had talked of the Wall Street bombing, the kidnapping, and the collapse of the finances of the psychoanalytic association. Freud's son Martin had finally been released from prison. 'His first act of freedom,' Freud said, 'was to relinquish it. He got married.'

Colette thanked Freud for agreeing to treat her brother.

'I haven't agreed to treat him,' answered Freud. 'I wrote you, Fraulein, stipulating my one condition. You didn't answer.'

Colette made no reply.

'I'm too old and too busy for half measures,' said Freud. 'I take very few new patients now; I only have time to train others to do so. Every new hour I take on is an hour lost for my own work. Psychoanalysis, Miss Rousseau, is not accomplished in a few days. You must be prepared to stay in Vienna for a very substantial period.'

'But I – have no means, no work,' said Colette.

'That's your concern,' answered Freud, his sharpness surprising Younger. 'If I'm to treat your brother, I must have your word that you will remain in Vienna this time as long as it takes.'

'I'm sorry,' said Colette. 'I don't know.'

Freud rose slowly, went to the window, opened it. A fresh night breeze tousled his white hair. From the little courtyard below, where Count Oktavian's carriage waited, came the stamping and neighing of horses. Freud took a deep breath. 'So,' he said, his back to Younger and Colette. 'Have you ever dreamt, Fraulein, of a child being beaten?'

'I beg your pardon?' said Colette.

'Have you?'

Colette hesitated. 'How did you know that?'

'Sometimes without knowing who is doing the beating?'

'Yes,' said Colette.

'It is a surprisingly common dream in women who feel they should be punished for something,' said Freud. 'Well, it's clear you didn't come to Vienna specifically to have your brother see me. It follows you have some other business. Based on your remark to Younger in the foyer, I can only conclude that you are here to find and marry your fiancé, the one who was in jail the last time you were here. That would explain your uncertainty about whether or how long you will be in Vienna. You don't know where he lives now – perhaps not in Austria at all – is that it?'

Colette was astonished.

'It's all right,' Younger said to her. 'He does this sort of thing all the time.'

'The real mystery,' said Freud, 'is how you managed to persuade Younger, your fiancé's rival, to join you on such a journey. I must say I find that impressive – and puzzling.'

'You're not the only one,' said Younger.

'Well, none of this affects my position,' said Freud. 'In case, Fraulein, you decide you are serious about finding employment here, I'll give you the address of Vienna's Radium Institute. I'm told it is excellent, and they hire women without compunction. I'm also going to give you the name and address of an old friend, a neurologist.' A smile, brief and not cheerful, passed over Freud's face as he wrote them a note. 'He has a treatment for war neuroses far more expeditious than mine. I can't vouch for what he does, but many believe in it, and since you seem interested in attempting a quick cure for your brother, Miss Rousseau, it would be remiss on my part not to mention him. As for you, Younger, it's high time we settled our unfinished business. I have an hour free at eleven tomorrow morning. I'll see you then.'

'I told you he could be brusque,' said Younger as their carriage clopped down the cobblestoned Berggasse toward the Danube canal.

'He's so very sad,' answered Colette.

'Freud? Tired, I think,' replied Younger. 'And angry – I'm not sure why.'

'Pragmatic, I would have said,' reflected Oktavian, their coachman. 'Professional.'

'I've never seen such sad eyes,' said Colette.

'I didn't find them sad at all,' replied Younger.

'Ah, there, you must take me out of it,' declared Oktavian. 'I could hear him from the window, but I couldn't see his eyes.'

'That's because you never know what other people are feeling,' Colette said to Younger. 'It's a good thing you gave up psychology. You're like a blind man.'

Chapter Fourteen

Among the grander edifices on Vienna's Ringstrasse was a five-story, pink-and-white confection of an apartment building, the first floor of which housed the elegant Café Landtmann. In the main salon of that coffeehouse, below a receding boulevard of crystal chandeliers, Younger met Freud at eleven the next morning. The head waiter had greeted Freud as if he knew him personally and guided them to a table at a window with elaborate drapery, through which they could see the magnificent state theater across the street.

'So,' said Freud, taking a seat, 'do you know what I want to discuss with you?'

'The Oedipus complex?' asked Younger.

'Miss Rousseau.'

'Why?'

'Tell me first,' said Freud, 'what you thought of my old friend Jauregg,: the neurologist.'

Younger, Colette, and Luc had visited Dr Julius Wagner-Jauregg in his university office earlier that morning. 'His treatment for war neurosis is electrocution,' said Younger.

'Yes. His team reports considerable success. Was he surprised I had sent you?'

'Very. He said you testified against him at a trial of some kind last week.'

'On the contrary, I testified for him. There was an allegation that he had essentially tortured our soldiers into returning to the front. The government commissioned me to investigate. I reported that his use of electrotherapy had been perfectly ethical. I explained, of course, that only psychoanalysis could uncover the roots of shell shock and cure it, but that this was not yet known in 1914. My friend – and his many supporters – spent the rest of the hearing attempting to destroy the reputation of every psychoanalyst in Vienna.' A waiter brought them two small gold- rimmed demitasses of coffee and a basket of pastries. 'Foolish of me. I'd somehow forgotten how intense a hostility we still provoke. But never mind. Did he persuade you to attempt electrocution on the boy?'

'He made a case for a single treatment at low voltage. He believes shell shock is a kind of short circuit inside the brain – and that a brief convulsive charge can clear the circuitry.'

'I know. And since you disbelieve in psychology, you should be favorably inclined.'

Younger pictured the confused and harrowed expressions he had seen in the faces of shell-shocked soldiers. The scientist in him knew that the cause of their suffering could indeed have been a cross-firing in their neural circuitry. But something in him rebelled at this diagnosis or at least at the treatment. At last he said, 'I don't believe there's anything wrong with the boy's brain.'

'Ah – you think the problem is in his larynx?'

'I doubt it,' said Younger.

'Well, at least you have one thing right. What was Miss Rousseau's opinion? No, let me guess. She was distracted and had no firm opinion. She wanted you to decide.'

'How did you know that?'

'Would you say she is self-destructive?' asked Freud.

'Not at all.'

'Really? My impression was that you had a taste for such women.'

'I make exceptions,' said Younger.

'She's not attracted to abusive men?'

'If you mean me, her attraction to abusive men is regrettably weak.'

'I don't mean you,' said Freud.

'Her fiancé – Gruber?'

'The man is a convicted criminal.'

Younger looked out the window. 'She only remembers a sweet, injured, devout soldier she knew in a hospital.'

'A maternal affection? Not likely.' Freud stirred his coffee. A scowl came to his already deeply furrowed brow. 'Was I too severe with her last night?'

'She can take it. Why were you severe?'

Freud removed his glasses and wiped them clean with a handkerchief, lingering on each lens. 'She reminds me of my Sophie, my second-to-youngest,' he said. 'Beautiful, headstrong. Sophie became engaged at the age of nineteen. To a thirty-year-old photographer. It was as if she couldn't get out of the house fast enough. I believe I was taking out on Miss Rousseau an anger I harbor against Sophie for leaving us so soon.'

'Sophie – she's the one who lives in Germany?'

'She's the one who is dead.'

Freud's spoon tapped the rim of his glass, repeatedly, unevenly.

'I didn't know,' said Younger.

'It happened last January. The flu. She was living in Berlin, she and her two little boys and her husband, whom I never treated as well as I should have. When we received word she was ill, there were no trains running – not even for an emergency. The next we heard, she was gone.' He took a deep breath. 'After that, fundamentally everything lost its meaning for me. To an unbeliever like myself, there can be no rationalizations in such circumstances. No justifications. Only mute submission. Blunt necessity. For several months, my own children – my other children – and their children -' Freud stopped, gathering himself – 'I could no longer bear the sight of them.'

Outside, the Ring was in its full daytime bloom. Cars and streetcars rolled by. A charming carriage trotted past. A governess strolled with a perambulator.

'Well, the intention that man be happy was never part of his creation,' said Freud. 'You will say it's superstition, but I have a foreboding about Miss Rousseau. What is her goal in coming to Vienna?'

'You guessed it last night. This Gruber fellow was just released from prison.'

'Come – you can't have forgotten all your psychology. What is her object?'

'To see if he still loves her, I suppose. Or perhaps if she still loves him. She made a promise. She feels she has to keep it.'

'Nonsense. I don't trust her motivation. Neither should you. Do you know what specifically her soldier was imprisoned for?'

'No.'

'I do. She told me herself – in tears, the day after you left Vienna last year. He beat up an old man. So at least the police say. I advised her that a ruffian who marches with the Anti-Semitic League was not a fit husband for her. I counseled her not to see him again. I thought she took my advice.'

'Evidently she reconsidered,' said Younger.

'There is a condition into which many young women fall. They attach themselves to violent men. They forgive any mistreatment. They think it love; it isn't. What they really want is to be punished for their sins, real and imagined – or for someone else's. There's something wrong with Miss Rousseau's attachment to this Gruber. I sense it. My advice to you is not to let her out of your sight. She's throwing herself into the arms of a criminal.'

'Maybe he'll beat her, and she'll come to her senses.'

Freud raised an eyebrow. Younger wondered if his own habit of doing so – raising a single brow – was copied from Freud. 'You feel,' said Freud, 'she's made her bed with this man, and you're inclined to let her sleep in it?'

'I don't control where Miss Rousseau sleeps.'

'You wish to see her punished – for choosing another man. You retaliate by letting her go.'

'Letting her go? I crossed an ocean trying to change her mind.'

'You can't change her mind. But you might be able to protect her.' 'From what?' asked Younger.

'From this Gruber. From a decision she'll regret the rest of her life.'

Younger, back at the Hotel Bristol, found a note waiting for him:

Dear Stratham:

I'm running to catch a train. I didn't go to the Radium Institute. I went to the prison, and they told me that Hans had left Vienna and gone to Braunau am Inn. I think it's his hometown. There's only one train a day for Braunau, and it leaves in half an hour. I expect to be back tomorrow. Luc is upstairs in my room. Please look after him. Some day I hope you'll understand.

Yours,

Colette

Younger stared at the note a long time. He ran his hands through his hair. Then he had a messenger sent for Oktavian Kinsky, the aristocratic carriage driver.

An hour later, Younger and Luc were waiting in the hotel lobby when Oktavian appeared, nattily dressed in the leather jacket and crisp cap customarily worn by chauffeurs of open-air automobiles. 'I know you wanted a motorcar, Monsieur,' said Oktavian, 'but this was the best I could do on short notice. Quite sufficient, however. I'll have you in Braunau in six hours.'

He pointed outside, where, in front of the hotel, stood a gleaming motorcycle with polished chrome trim and an attached wood-paneled sidecar.

'No good,' said Younger.

Oktavian saw the problem: Luc was dressed for travel as well, and the sidecar would hold only one passenger. 'Is the young fellow coming? I didn't realize.'

Younger walked outside. Oktavian and Luc followed him. 'The boy and I will go ourselves,' said Younger.

'But the vehicle isn't mine,' Oktavian replied. 'I don't think-'

'You'll have it back tomorrow. I guarantee it. I'll take this too, if you don't mind.' Younger relieved Oktavian of his leather jacket. 'And the cap.'

'Oh, dear,' said Oktavian.

The top of the sidecar had a hole in it for the passenger's torso. It opened into two leaves, revealing a cushioned seat and a small storage compartment. Younger fitted the leather jacket onto Luc, pulled the cap down over his ears, deposited him onto the seat, and closed the two leaves, locking them into place. Not long after, they were on the open road.

As he drove, Younger taught Luc how to lean into the curves to increase their speed. The jacket and cap were comically oversized on the boy, but they kept him warm. Younger said nothing about the purpose behind their mission, and Luc didn't ask. All in all, it wasn't bad riding – until the rains came.

The first crack of lightning split the sky in front of them without warning. A thunderclap rent the air immediately afterward, like a howitzer exploding directly over their heads. Luc seized Younger's arm in alarm. Younger momentarily lost control of the handlebar, the motorcycle swerving and nearly spinning out beneath him. When he'd straightened them out, Younger barked at the boy roughly. 'When you're scared,' he added, 'move slower, not faster.'

The walled village of Braunau, on the river Inn, was quaint and utterly German in character, a mere stone's throw from Bavaria. Colorful pointed-roof houses adjoined one another in picturesque little town squares, all presided over by a high-steepled church. There was no railway station – just a platform and ticket booth.

Younger pulled his motorcycle up to that platform in the gathering darkness. He wiped the grit from his eyes and the water from his forehead, wishing he'd had goggles. The trip hadn't taken six hours. It had taken ten – a combination of the rain slowing them down, the necessity of feeding Luc, and their getting lost on three different occasions. Younger opened the top of the sidecar and pulled Luc out; the interior was drenched, as was the boy.

Younger asked the ticket agent if there were any blankets on hand. There were. Younger threw them to Luc, ordering him to take off his wet clothes and dry himself. 'The train from Vienna,' Younger said to the man. 'Has it come?'

'Yes – two hours ago,' answered the agent.

'Did you happen to see a girl, dark hair, traveling by herself, get off that train?'

'French?' asked the agent.

'Yes.'

'Very beautiful?'

'That's her.'

'Nein.'

Younger waited; no further information came. 'What do you mean, nein?' he asked.

'I wasn't here when the Vienna train arrived, Mein Herr,' said the man. 'But your fraulein must have been on it. I sold her a ticket.'

'A ticket where?'

'She bought a one-way on the night train to Prague. No baggage. You only just missed her; the train left less than an hour ago. Most unusual. Imagine, a girl like that traveling at night by herself.'

Younger ran his hands through his hair. 'I'm looking for a Hans Gruber. Do you know where he lives? Or his family?'

Younger found the house the ticket agent had described to him – a small, fenced, rustic affair, clean but dilapidated. The roof looked like it might collapse at any moment. A thick-set, hard-eyed old woman answered the door.

'Frau Gruber?' asked Younger.

'Yes,' she said. 'What do you want?'

'I'm a friend of Hans's.'

'Liar.' The old woman's voice was both shrewish and shrewd. The sight of the blanket-wrapped boy at Younger's side did nothing to soften her. 'Go away. He's not here. He's in Vienna.'

She tried to shut the door, but Younger stopped her. 'That's not what you told the girl,' he said. 'You told her Prague.'

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. The old yellow teeth broke into a nasty laugh. 'You think I don't know what he'll do with her? I know his tricks. He'll take the shirt from her back. He'll make her whore for him and throw her in the rubbish bin when she's used up. Just like all the others.'

Younger's reaction to these predictions was surprisingly ambivalent. On the one hand, he felt Colette might actually be in danger if she married Gruber. On the other, he felt the odds of her marrying Gruber had distinctly decreased. 'Tell me where in Prague I can find him.'

'I know why you're here,' said the old woman. 'He owes you money. I see it in your eyes. Well, he owes me first.' She shook her head bitterly 'Taking the family stipend all these years, just because the government addresses the envelopes to him. Then he dares come back here and sleep under my roof. Get out of my doorway or I'll call the police. You expect me to help you get money from Hans? Anything he has belongs to me.'

'How much?' asked Younger.

'What's that?'

'How much does he owe you?'

The old woman was only too happy to work out the sum; it was a large one. Younger took from his wallet, in crowns, a significantly larger amount. Her eyes twinkled.

Younger left the woman's house with an address in Prague and with Luc clad in a dry and clean, if ancient, brown wool suit of boy's clothing. From the ticket agent, he had a good idea how to get to

Prague. 'You get some sleep in there,' he said to Luc as the latter climbed into the sidecar. 'We have a long road ahead.'

Luc fastened his eyes searchingly on Younger.

'All right, there's no mystery to it,' said Younger. 'Your sister is looking for a man she met during the war. They were supposed to be married. We're following her.'

Luc still looked at Younger.

'No, I don't know what I'm going to do if we find her,' said Younger. 'It's probably pointless anyway. By the time we get to Prague, they're likely to be in a church with the wedding bells already pealing. At which point I'll look pretty foolish.'

The boy tapped Younger's arm. He fished around inside the compartment for something to write on and found some of Oktavian's engraved cards. On the back of one, he wrote a message and handed it to Younger. The card said, 'My sister wants to marry you.'

'That is demonstrably false,' answered Younger, mounting the motorcycle and kick-starting it.

Luc tapped at his sleeve and handed him another card. This one said, 'I don't like my sister.'

'Yes, you do,' said Younger.

It was nine in the morning when, in a light rain, they rattled over the cobblestone streets of Prague's Nové Mesto, or New Town, where 'new' refers to the green days of the mid-fourteenth century. The jumbling of epochs throughout the great city was incongruous. Gothic churches jostled with ornate neoclassical domes; baroque palaces sported box-like towers from the Middle Ages; and the streets were studded with nineteenth-century statues of eighteenth-century generals rearing back on their steeds, swords in hand. In the drizzling rain, all was gray; even the gold spires on the churches and the salmon-pink houses seemed gray.

Younger's eyes were bloodshot. He had driven through the night. Next to him, slumped over in the sidecar, Luc lay sleeping.

On a wide avenue bordering the slow and turbid river Vltava, Younger pulled up outside a cafe showing signs of life. He got out, lit a cigarette, and crossed the avenue to a parapet where he could look out at the water. Downriver, boats passed into tunnel-like vaults below a medieval stone bridge. Yawning, Luc – awakened by the vehicle's halt – joined him. Across the river, the land sloped up to a considerable height, at the summit of which, reflecting the glinting rays of a morning sun, stood the sprawling Prazsky hrad, the castle of Prague.

'It's the largest castle in the world,' Younger said to Luc. 'Before the war, it was home to emperors and kings. It's empty now – being rebuilt, they say. Renovated for government use. Smell that? Something's baking in that cafe. Let's go have a look.'

It took them another hour to find the street that old Frau Gruber in Braunau had written down for Younger. The Czech language was incomprehensible to him; even when he found someone with whom he could get by in German, no one recognized the street name. This may have been because the street was located in the oldest quarter, which was a maze of labyrinthine alleys, or because Younger couldn't make its pronunciation intelligible.

At last they found the little street, near an ancient stone gunpowder tower. From surrounding rooftops, a tribunal of life-size saints, carved from centuries-darkened marble, gazed down on them in postures twisted in either bliss or agony. Two- and three-story houses, hundreds of years old, lined the narrow street, their opposing balconies so close that the occupants might almost have been able to shake hands across them.

Younger knocked at the house posted with the number he was looking for. He wasn't sure what he would do if someone answered, but no one did. He tried the door; it was locked. He also tried questioning passersby, asking for Hans Gruber. They had no idea what he was saying – or if they did, the name meant nothing to them.

'We'll just have to wait,' he said to Luc. A short way down the street, he parked the motorcycle in a space between two old buildings and lit a cigarette.

By early afternoon, Colette still had not appeared. Nor had anyone fitting the description of Hans Gruber. It occurred to Younger that old Frau Gruber might have lied to him about the address. He didn't think so. Another possibility was that she had made a mistake about the address, but if that were true, then Colette would make the same mistake and eventually turn up – assuming she hadn't beaten them there, which Younger considered very unlikely, given the propensity of the Austrian trains to break down and arrive at their destinations up to twenty-four hours late.

At a nearby store, Younger bought a loaf of bread and some thick slices of ham. When he returned with these goods, the boy handed him another message: 'Am I a coward?'

Younger fixed a sandwich for the boy and another for himself. 'I'm going to answer you with a bromide,' said Younger. 'In English, a bromide is a platitude, a commonplace – something everybody knows. Actually, it's also a bromine salt, but never mind that. Being afraid doesn't make you a coward. That's the bromide – but it happens to be true.'

Luc wrote on a new card: 'You're never afraid.'

'Oh, yes I am,' said Younger. 'I'll tell you a secret. Bravery consists of not letting anyone else know how scared you are. Sorry to have to tell you, but by the time they're your age, some boys have already proven they're heroes. You might as well know the truth. I knew a boy once – no older than you – who did about the bravest thing I've ever seen. This boy had been kidnapped. He was tied up. And he still had the presence of mind to point my attention to a test tube of uranium dioxide that happened to be rolling off a table at just that moment. Saved us from being killed by a rather ugly fellow. Actually a very ugly fellow. So ugly he looked better with his hair on fire.'

Night had fallen when Luc woke him up. The street was now full of light and noise from several boisterous taverns. The air was cold. Younger s mouth tasted stale; his whole body was stiff. Luc pointed eagerly: a slim female silhouette in a lightweight coat was approaching the house with determined steps. It was Colette. She knocked on the door. This time someone answered, and she disappeared up a flight of stairs. Younger waited, scanning the windows overhead for signs of life.

He was considering what to do next when Colette reappeared in the doorway and proceeded down the street, passing directly opposite Younger and Luc. A few steps on, she turned and vanished into a stone archway.

They followed, cautiously. The archway led to a surprisingly large, crowded, open-air beer hall in the courtyard of what might have been an abbey centuries before. A small orchestra played merrily. Lanterns hung from branches. Men sang, unpleasantly loud and off-key. Women were plentiful, but none was unaccompanied except Colette. There was dancing on a flagstone dance floor. Colette, it seemed, was looking for Gruber.

Younger was sorely tempted to show himself. But he suspected that if he presented himself straightaway, before she had even met her Heinrich, Colette would be furious and indisposed to listen to him. His interference might even, Younger reflected, make her more stubborn. It seemed better to let Gruber sink his own ship. If Frau Gruber was right, Heinrich would be a cad and a ladies' man – a type that might possibly have fooled Colette when he was sick and wounded, but that would surely repulse her now. And if Colette wasn't repulsed, there would be time for Younger to confront her later and to make a last appeal. In addition to which, Younger had to admit to a certain curiosity; he wanted to see how Colette and Gruber would behave when they saw each other.

So Younger installed himself with Luc in a dark corner of the crowded garden as far as possible from Colette. He pulled the oversized driver's cap low over the boy's head, although in the darkness and crush of bodies, there was little chance of Colette spying them. She seemed preoccupied, in any event, with her own business. Under one of the hanging lamps, conspicuous in her solitude, Colette took a seat on a bench at one end of a long wooden table. Almost ostentatiously, it seemed to Younger, she removed her coat and revealed a dress like none in which he had ever seen her before.

Her arms were bare, her back exposed. Her hemline, which almost revealed her knees – no, which did reveal her knees when, seated, she crossed one leg over the other – conspired with her high-heeled shoes to attract virtually every male eye in the beer garden. Never did a back express so clearly that it was made to be looked at. The men at the table behind her manifestly thought so. They pounded each other on the shoulders, pointing to the newcomer, and made the predictable male noises and gestures.

Among those men, despite never having laid eyes on him before, Younger instantly recognized Hans Gruber. He was unmistakable: the only tall, blond, strapping, blue-eyed man in the garden. He was an exceedingly well-looking man – in his late twenties, rakish in clothing, confident in demeanor, generously ordering drinks not only for himself but for a coterie of friends as well.

From another direction, a stranger with a greasy mustache stumbled up to Colette's table, apparently meaning to engage her in repartee, but tripping over her bench in his haste. Colette swiveled deftly, so that the man fell not into her lap but onto the table instead, howling at the blow to his shin and knocking over a collection of glasses and bottles. In the ensuing quarrel, Colette showed not the slightest interest, removing a cigarette holder from her purse. Younger had never seen her smoke.

A cupped pair of male hands appeared with a lit match. The hands belonged, of course, to Hans Gruber. Colette accepted the light. She looked up at him and spoke, but the noise of the place was such that Younger could only see the moving lips. It was not obvious to Younger that Gruber recognized her. Or perhaps, as his hands lingered near her lips and they spoke together, their faces not far apart, he was recognizing her just now.

They continued conversing for a while – she smoking, he occasionally thrusting off other men who sought an audience with her. Gruber ordered a drink for her; it was delivered; Gruber paid for it; she drank it. Presently he led her to the dance floor. And dance they did, with Hans's right hand caressing Colette's waist.

Younger grimaced, inwardly.

Their dancing lasted an hour or more, punctuated by rambunctious consumption of alcohol in abundant quantity, not only by Gruber, but by Colette and two short, stocky friends of his, who lacked female companionship of their own but seemed to take as their goal the furtherance of Gruber's conquest. At one point Gruber downed a triple stein of sudsing beer in one go, cheered on by chants of his name. During a lull in the music, Gruber helped Colette into her coat and led her merrily out of the beer garden, his two friends trailing behind them, laughing uproariously.

Younger let them pass out of the garden before setting off after them. He and Luc got to the street just in time to see Colette entering the back of an open-roofed four-seater. Gruber got in next to her, and the car drove off. Gruber sang loudly – and not badly, Younger had to admit – his arm draped over Colette's shoulder. Younger hurried to the motorcycle.

Six-pointed stars and Hebrew letters on storefronts indicated that they had entered a Jewish quarter. Younger could not have said exactly what he was doing – surreptitiously trailing Colette and her beau as they drove through Prague – but he kept at it. Younger had followed Gruber's car on a meandering, inebriated path. More than once, the car rolled up onto the sidewalk before rediscovering the street.

They were now on a boulevard called Mikulasska Street, lined with trees and art nouveau facades lit capriciously by gas lamps. An old woman scurried across the street, carrying something heavy in her arms, as if running for cover.

'What's she doing out at this hour?' asked Younger, speaking his thoughts aloud.

Shouts came from unseen precincts. Packs of boys could be seen running down side streets. Up ahead was a commotion. Gruber's car stopped just past the disturbance. Younger came to a halt as well, next to a ring of more than a dozen young men on the large sidewalk. At the center of their circle, a gentleman in evening clothes – a slight man with glasses and a walking stick – was being pushed and taunted. Someone yanked away his cane and threw it at a shop window, breaking the glass.

'Festive,' said Younger.

Gruber hopped out of his car and ran toward the crowd. He pulled aside one gawker after another to reach the center of the circle, where the taunted gentleman in evening clothes stood.'Jiidisch?' asked Gruber.

The frightened man didn't reply. The onlookers seemed as suspicious of Gruber as they were hostile to the gentleman.

'Jiidisch?' Gruber repeated, not malignly, but as if it were an important point of information.

Luc looked at Younger, who explained quietly, 'He asking if the man's Jewish.'

The bespectacled gentleman in evening clothes evidently understood the German word. He nodded just perceptibly: perhaps he nursed a hope of rescue from the foreigner. The admission was costly. Gruber removed the man's glasses, let them fall to the ground, and crushed them under his shoe. The crowd erupted with approving shouts. The gentleman tried to back away, but Gruber caught him by a lapel and punched him in the face, causing him to fall backward through the broken windowpane. The crowd cheered still louder. Hans, wiping his hands, pushed through the circle of onlookers and returned to his car.

Younger considered going to the aid of the assaulted man, but Gruber was even then climbing back into his car. Probably Colette had no knowledge of what he had just done. Younger could see her in the backseat, letting Gruber throw his arm around her again. The car restarted and drove away. Younger left the fallen man to his fate.

Gruber's car rolled slowly up the boulevard. Younger followed, keeping his distance. After several blocks, they entered an old square in the center of which a bonfire burned. People clapped their hands and sang around it. Others, loaded with piles of heavy tomes, emerged from an old and considerable building on the opposite side of the square. When these people reached the bonfire, they fed it with the books.

'It's a good old-fashioned pogrom,' said Younger.

Gruber's car crossed the square, circumventing the revelers, and about a half mile farther on, pulled up at the gate of a small, grassy park. Younger stopped a block or so behind him. The interior of the park was dotted with wrought-iron lampposts and scattered trees, whose russet leaves shimmered silver in the moonlight. Gruber and Colette got out. His friends remained within, drinking and carousing.

'Wait here,' said Younger to Luc.

Younger dismounted and slipped through the darkness to the perimeter of the park, where he encountered a high, barred, iron fence. Through the bars, he could make out Colette and Gruber strolling arm in arm. Younger moved along the fence, watching them penetrate farther into the center of the park. Gruber was carrying on in rapid German; Colette laughed flirtatiously, although Younger had trouble believing she could understand what he was saying. To Younger's disgust, Gruber twirled Colette every now and then as if they were still dancing in the beer garden.

They stopped under the soft light of a gas lamp. Gruber slipped her coat off and let it fall to the ground. He turned Colette around so that he faced her back. His put his hands on her stomach and seemed to be nibbling at her ear. Younger recalled an evening when he himself had done something similar: Colette had been rather less acquiescent. Roughly, Gruber turned her round again. They were face-to-face. He stroked her mouth with his thumb. Colette's purse fell to the grass. Gruber drew her in, bent to kiss her – then abruptly staggered back, palms raised in the air.

Colette was holding a small pistol. There had been no report; she hadn't shot him. But she pointed it straight at his heart with two hands. She was saying something to him in German. From her cadence Younger had the impression she was reciting memorized words, but she spoke too quietly for Younger to understand. Gruber dropped to his knees, pleading, begging. Colette was breathing hard; her shoulders heaved up and down. Then she grew still, her pistol aimed at Gruber's eyes, the range point-blank.

But she hesitated. A full thirty seconds she hesitated, Gruber supplicating all the while. At last she took a backward step, then another and another, until she turned and fled into the darkness.

Younger heard a collision and a muffled cry. A moment later, Hans's stocky friends appeared in the cone of light falling from the lamppost. Between them, they held a struggling Colette, her feet not quite touching the ground. She must have run right into them. One of the men had a fat hand covering her mouth; the other pressed Colette's own gun into her ribs.

Gruber got up. He spat, wiped his nose on his sleeve, and took the pistol from his friend. He slapped Colette across the face, called her a foul name in German, and inserted the gun into her mouth.

'You there, Gruber!' bellowed Younger, straining at the bars of the fence. 'Let her go!'

His voice took the men by surprise. They heard Younger, but couldn't see him. Gruber spun around, waving the pistol blindly in Younger's direction.

'We're coming for you, Gruber,' shouted Younger. 'We're going to rip your heart out of your chest and stuff it in your mouth and make you eat it.'

Younger was of course lying: there was no 'we.' Or so Younger thought until a little figure dashed up next to him and fought its way through the bars of the fence, which were too tightly spaced for a man, but not for a boy. Younger grabbed Luc by his leather jacket just as he squeezed through. His feet spun like a flywheel, slapping at the ground, but he went nowhere.

The sound of these footsteps had an immediate effect. Evidently believing that he was being chased, Gruber broke for the park gate, ordering his friends to bring the girl. The two men obeyed at once, dragging Colette between them. Younger, yanking Luc back through the fence, sprinted away as well, carrying the boy over his shoulder. He had farther to go, but he reached the motorcycle almost as quickly as Gruber and his friends reached their car.

'Stay when I tell you to, damn it,' ordered Younger, jamming Luc back into the sidecar and this time pinning the boy's arms and shoulders into the closed interior, so that he couldn't squirm out. 'Brave lad.'

Younger fired up the motorcycle's engine and pulled out in chase.

Gruber had taken the wheel of his car. He drove savagely through the narrow streets. He didn't slow when he sideswiped a parked car or even when he sent pedestrians diving out of his way In fact he sped up once when a man in the middle of the street had nowhere to go; on impact, the man was sent sprawling. In the backseat, Colette was sandwiched between Gruber's two friends, who held her fast.

Younger pursued, but could not close the distance between them. Suddenly they emerged onto an avenue bordering the river, where Younger, opening the throttle, was able to make up ground. Gruber turned under a Gothic pointed arch onto a medieval bridge, hurtling past twisted baroque statues on either side, again sending pedestrians scurrying away. As they reached the far side of the river, Younger was right behind him.

But Gruber made a sharp turn off the bridge, and though Younger tried to follow, the motorcycle skidded out beneath him, spinning a hundred and eighty degrees and slamming into a shuttered wooden stall. Younger had the bike going again in a moment, but he had lost ground. Down the street, Gruber turned hard again, tires screeching, heading uphill. Following, Younger entered a neighborhood with zigzagging streets that grew increasingly steep. For a moment Younger lost Gruber's car completely. Then, in the distance, he saw it take a hairpin turn and disappear up a steep alley.

Younger raced to follow. The street underneath turned into a cobblestone ramp lined by houses on one side and a stone wall on the other. They were ascending to a great height. Low steps intervened every fifty feet or so; Younger bounced in the air every time they climbed over one of them, with Luc in the sidecar airborne next to him. They flew by a roadblock, which was broken and swinging: Gruber's car had obviously smashed through only moments before.

At the summit, Younger entered a huge dark plaza. He stopped the bike. The massive Gothic cathedral of St. Vitus loomed up one side, and the enormous Prague castle on the other, engulfed in shadows.

The plaza was empty, littered with rocky debris and construction equipment. In some places the ground had been dug out in vast holes. In other places mounds of earth were piled twelve feet high. All was silent. Strange oblong shapes broke up the moonlight. There was no sign of Gruber.

Younger didn't like it. Gruber's car could be hiding anywhere, while if Younger drove into the open plaza, he and Luc would be exposed – wide-open targets. A flock of birds screamed from a distant corner of the square, rising and peeling away, but Younger heard no motor, nor saw any vehicle lights. 'Maybe they aren't here,' said Younger quietly, not believing his own words.

He killed his headlight. With a light hand on the throttle, he guided the motorcycle around the dug-up terrain, skirting the large equipment and the dangerous pits. Still there was no sign of Gruber. They came to two great conical mounds of earth, close together. Younger rolled the motorcycle between them.

Just ahead was a vast and panoramic vista overlooking all Prague – its river, its bridges, its many districts sparkling with lights. At the edge of the precipice, there had been a retaining wall, but it was demolished. Younger began to fear that he really might have lost his prey.

The response to this inward conjecture was the roar of an engine behind them and a crash. Gruber's car had rammed them from the rear, forcing them several feet closer to the cliff. Gruber backed up and rammed them again. Younger had no escape route, caught between the two hillocks on either side of them and the precipice ahead. Gruber's car now locked against the rear of the motorcycle and sidecar; its engine screamed, pushing them forward. Younger's brakes had no effect. He put the bike in reverse and gunned the motor. This slowed their forward motion, but didn't halt it. They came to the very edge of the precipice – and lurched to a stop. The remains of the demolished retaining wall, maybe five or six inches in height, had saved them.

Gruber backed up one last time. Younger tried to yank Luc out of the sidecar by the collar of his leather jacket, but the boy was crammed into it too well. Younger couldn't get him out. He heard the roar of Gruber's car; he heard its gears engage. Younger jumped onto the top of the sidecar. He seized the boy by the armpits, pulling and twisting at him just as the final impact came, which punched the motorcycle over the curb. Younger was thrown into the air, with the boy in his arms, as the motorcycle plunged over the cliffside and banged down the mountainous slope, flipping over, hitting ground and flipping again, finally crashing into a stone wall at the bottom of the hill, where it exploded into flame.

Younger looked down at the explosion from a spot a few yards down from the top of the cliff. He and Luc had rolled down the treacherous slope together until Younger arrested their descent by the clever stratagem of slamming into a tree trunk. The explosion sent pieces of the motorcycle high in the air, several of which rained down on either side of Younger and Luc. The boy wasn't breathing properly: his eyes were wide, but he wasn't taking in breath at all. Younger had a heart-stopping instant. Then Luc began to gasp brokenly.

'You're all right,' said Younger. 'Just the wind knocked out of you. Stay here.'

Younger ran up the slope. When he climbed back into the plaza, he saw Gruber's car at the other end – about to leave the square by the same cobbled lane they had come up. Younger put fingers to mouth and whistled piercingly in the night.

Gruber's car stopped. Younger whistled again. The car backed up and wheeled around, its headlamps illuminating Younger, perhaps a hundred feet separating them. For an instant there was no movement except the wind ruffling the tails of Younger's long overcoat. The great towers of the castle were shrouded in darkness; moonlight cast a faint glow on the flagstones. Younger opened his arms wide, beckoning Gruber to come at him.

The car's engine clamored. Younger began walking forward. The car jerked into motion; Younger broke into a trot. Gruber accelerated; Younger ran. In the center of the plaza, when the collision was imminent, Younger leapt high in the air. The car's hood passed under him. He hit the windshield with his shoulder, shielding his face behind an arm.

The glass gave way, knife-like shards flying into Gruber's face, and the car spun out of control. The front passenger seat broke from its anchorage when Younger smashed into it, plowing into one of the men in the backseat, who cried out in pain, his legs pinned or perhaps broken.

Next to that pinned and unarmed man, in the middle of the backseat, was Colette. 'Stratham?' she said.

'Don't move,' he replied.

Gruber's second stocky friend, on the other side of Colette, had her pistol in his hand and tried to point it at Younger as the car skidded to a halt. Younger seized that hand, placed his own thumb over the gunman's trigger finger, and forced the man's first two shots to fire harmlessly into the air. Then he thrust the man's arm across Colette's chest, so that the gun pressed directly into the ribs of the other man – the pinned man. Younger squeezed off three shots, after which he jackknifed the gunman's arm so that the pistol pointed at the gunman's own temple. The last look on the fellow's face was incomprehension; he didn't seem to understand how a weapon he himself was holding could be aimed at his head. Younger caused the pistol to fire.

Gruber, in the front seat, had been desperately scraping glass from his bloody face and eyes. At the sound of the gunshots, he thrashed wildly at his door, unable to find the latch. At last he began climbing over the door instead.

Younger got hold of Gruber's ankles and stood up on the front seat of the car, holding Gruber upside down. Gruber's hands scraped at the flagstone like the paws of a rodent trying to burrow into the earth. Younger lifted him several feet off the ground and dropped him, face- first, onto the stone.

The blow stunned Gruber, but didn't knock him out. Younger saw on the dashboard the steel shaft that had separated the two panes of the windshield. He grabbed it, jumped over the door, and hoisted Gruber off the ground, holding him up against the car. Gruber's face was bloody, his eyes frightened. Colette, prying herself loose from between the two dead men, climbed out of the car as well.

'I guess the engagement's off,' Younger said to Colette, without looking at her.

'He wasn't my fiancé,' she answered. 'He-'

'I know what he is,' said Younger.

'No,' said Colette, 'he-'

'I know,' repeated Younger.

'Luc,' cried Colette. The boy was standing only a few feet away, lit up by the car's headlamps.

Younger looked at the cowering Hans Gruber. 'I'm trying to think,' Younger said to him in a low voice consisting mostly of breath, 'of a reason to let you live.' 'It wasn't me,' said Gruber. 'It was all of us. Everyone did it.'

'That's not a reason,' said Younger in the same unvoiced voice.

'They ordered us to do it,' said Gruber imploringly.

'I don't believe you,' said Younger.

'Stratham-' said Colette.

'The only thing I can think of is your cravenness,' Younger observed, studying Gruber's pleading face. Younger thought it over. Then he said, 'But that's not a reason either.'

Younger ran the steel windshield shaft through the underside of Hans Gruber's chin straight up into his skull. The blue eyes froze. Younger looked at those eyes for a long moment – then let the corpse slump to the ground.

'We'll take his car,' said Younger.

Dragging the other two bodies out of the backseat, Younger left all three corpses in a heap. Luc gazed down at the dead men. Then he took his sister's hand, and the two of them got into the vehicle. As they crossed a bridge over the Vltava in their windshield-less vehicle, sirens and alarms began to wail.

Several hours later, Younger opened a sleeping compartment aboard a rumbling train. A single candle cast an unsteady light. On the lower bunk, both Luc and Colette were stretched out. The boy was sleeping.

'Is that you?' Colette whispered in the darkness.

'Yes.' Younger loosened his tie, went to the washbasin, rinsed his face. They had just crossed into Austria. He had waited in the corridor to see if any police boarded. None had.

'You're a good killer,' she said unexpectedly.

He picked up Luc and laid him in the upper bunk. The boy stirred but didn't open his eyes. Colette, startled, sat up, and pulled the sheet protectively up to her neck. She was afraid, evidently, that he was going to lie down next to her.

He was about to reassure her that he had moved the boy only because he had found another compartment for himself, so that she and Luc didn't have to share a bunk. But the words didn't come out. Instead he was seized with fury. He tore the sheet from her. Dressed only in a slip, she drew her knees close to her and encircled them with both arms, green eyes sparkling faint and anxious in the candlelight.

He shook his head. 'What does a man have to do before you trust him?' he asked. 'Die?'

'I trust you.'

'That's why you're acting like I'm about to rape you.'

She drew farther back into the shadowy corner of the bunk, clutching the silver chain she always wore around her neck.

He could not have explained his own violence. If it was rage, he had felt its kind only a few times, during the war. He reached down, took her by the wrists, pulled her up standing before him, and yanked the chain from her neck. She said nothing. He spoke quietly, his words just audible over the noise of the locomotive: 'I admire it – I do. You lied to me for years. You did it so well, pretending to be aggrieved at how much I kept from you. And now you play the little God-fearing virgin again, with your cross in your hands and your faith that He'll protect you. Didn't anyone tell you that good Christian girls don't hunt a man down for six years to kill him?'

'It's not a cross,' she said.

He opened his palm: at the end of the silver chain was a locket.

'It's how I knew his name,' said Colette. She took the locket from him, prized its two halves apart along a tiny hinge, and removed from within a small thin metal oval. 'When we found Mother, her fist was clenched. I opened it, one finger at a time. This was inside. She had torn it off the man who – who killed her.'

Younger held the little oval: it was a soldier's dog tag. Angling it, he made out the etched letters spelling Hans Gruber.

'I wore it every day,' she said, 'since 1914. If I had told you the truth, would you have let me come to Vienna to find him?'

He didn't answer.

'Wouldn't you have tried to stop me?' she asked.

'Yes.'

She turned to the compartment's window and twisted at its catch. It wouldn't turn. She pulled at it with both hands. Finally the upper pane dropped open, and a ferocious wind blew in with the roar of the rushing night. She fell back into his arms, her long black hair blowing about, getting in her eyes and his. He saw the delicate line of her cheek and the anxious radiance of her eyes looking up at him, flickering in the candlelight. He held her close, so close her chest was pressing against his, and put his lips to hers. For a moment her whole body surrendered to him; then she pushed herself away, took the dog tag from him, and flung it out the open window. It disappeared into the night without a trace, without a sound.

She turned to face him, shivering in the cold air that swirled through the compartment, hair billowing, bare shoulders catching the light of the candle. He could see that she wouldn't resist him. If he put his hands on her, she would let him: Was it a debt she felt she owed him? He glanced at the slumbering form of the boy and shut the window.

For his part, Luc – not asleep – waited for the unpleasant sound of kissing or other things that grown-ups do. It never came. Instead he heard the door open and close as Younger left the compartment.

Chapter Fifteen

It is often wondered by Americans, not to mention residents of the nation's capital, whether the city of Washington is in the District of Columbia or is the District of Columbia. The answer in 1920 was neither. There was no city of Washington.

When the United States first placed its capital on the banks of the Potomac River between Maryland and Virginia at the end of the eighteenth century, the land devoted to the enterprise was a perfectly shaped square, or diamond, each side of which was exactly ten miles in length. The whole of this diamond was called the territory of Columbia. In that territory were three municipalities: the early settlement of Georgetown, the formerly Virginian city of Alexandria, and the new capital city of Washington.

More than a half century later, as the United States struck numerous futile compromises between North and South, one such bargain was negotiated in the territory of Columbia. Alexandria, poor and intensely pro-slavery, was retroceded back to the slave state of Virginia, while the trade in human property was abolished everywhere else in the territory. As a result, the capital lost its geometric perfection as well as about a third of its hundred square miles. Meanwhile, the cities of Georgetown and Washington grew to a point where they began to encroach. Accordingly, in the 1870s, Congress repealed the charters of those two municipalities, combining them instead, together with the rest of the territory, into a single District of Columbia.

From that point on, there was, formally speaking, no city of

Washington at all. But no one has ever scrupled over that nicety, and Washington continues to be spoken of and believed in by all, just as if it were a real city.

'Progress report, Littlemore,' said Treasury Secretary Houston in his mild Carolinian voice on a late October morning, having summoned the detective to his sumptuous office, which was larger than many New York apartments Littlemore knew. 'I should very much like to claim some progress just now.'

'In time for the election?' asked Littlemore.

'Correct.'

'I wish I had more for you, Mr Houston.' Littlemore was frustrated; none of his leads was panning out. 'My boys still haven't found anybody who saw the getaway truck leaving the alley after the bombing. But they will. Somebody had to have seen it. Meantime, I've been investigating everybody who had anything to do with the gold transfer. The only one that sticks out is Riggs, and he's gone.'

'Riggs?' asked Houston. Who's that?'

'Your officer who died on September sixteenth.'

'Oh, yes. What about him?'

'Riggs applied for a passport last July,' said Littlemore. 'Planning a little foreign travel.'

'So he was one of the criminals!' declared Houston.

'Looks like it,' said Littlemore. 'Unfortunately I can't find anybody who knew him. No wife. No family. He was hired by Treasury here in Washington in 1917. Transferred to New York last year. Who would have transferred him, sir?'

'I have no idea. I became Secretary only this year.'

'Could you find out?'

'I don't see why not.'

Littlemore rubbed his chin. 'I wonder if they could have taken the gold out by sea. The harbor's right near Wall Street. Have we been checking the ships sailing out of New York?'

'Have we?' said Houston. 'Customs inspects every single container of cargo loaded onto outgoing ships. Gold is very heavy, Littlemore. It would be impossible to get twelve thousand pounds of gold onto a vessel without our knowledge.'

'Okay, let's say they didn't sail it out. They took it away in their truck. What then? You're the expert, Mr Houston. If you're sitting on all that metal, what do you do with it?'

'Melt it down. Re-bar it.'

'Why?'

'Every Treasury bar is engraved with our marks. To sell that gold, the thieves need to erase those marks, and the only way to do that is to melt it down. Once melted and re-barred, gold is untraceable. That's what they do with Soviet metal.'

'The Russians have gold?'

'Vast amounts – from the Tsars' treasure houses. It's contraband. Can't be sold anywhere in the civilized world. Even I'm not allowed to buy it. What the Russians do is smuggle it here by ship, melt it, bar it, and then sell it to us.'

'Us? You mean the Treasury?'

'Certainly. The United States Treasury will buy any and all gold presented to it, no matter in what quantity, and we pay the best price of any country in the world. Except for Russian gold, which we won't touch – provided we can identify it as Russian. We just intercepted a shipment the other day. Didn't you read about it? Over two million dollars in Russian metal hidden on a Swedish ocean liner. Customs found it. I sent the Swedes packing. The ship's back at sea now, taking the Russian gold home with it.'

'Mr Houston, you better bring that ship back in.'

'What for?'

'Classic bait and switch,' said Littlemore. 'That Swedish ship sailed out of New York carrying a cargo of gold with your authorization. But maybe beneath a few bars of Russian metal, the rest of it wasn't Russian. Maybe it was your gold – the stolen gold.'

'I don't believe it.'

'Bring that ship back in, Mr Houston. Then we'll know for sure.'

'I can't intercept a ship on the high seas and haul it back to New York.'

'Why not? Send out a few cruisers. We used to do it all the time during the war.'

'We're not at war now, Littlemore. It's very delicate these days. Tensions are high. We don't want an international incident, for heaven's sake.'

'Then just board her, Mr Houston. Open the crates of gold. Check the bars and make sure they're Russian. That's all.'

'Don't tell me how to do my job,' said Houston. 'We're talking about a passenger ship. A thousand people aboard. It would be in every newspaper all over world if I were wrong. And what would I say I was looking for? Stolen Treasury gold – and let everyone know about the theft?'

'You don't have to say. People will think you're looking for arms or something.'

'It's pure speculation. I'm not going to send the United States Navy on a wild-goose chase.' He drummed his fingers on his desk. 'What did Fall want from you?'

'To let him know if I found evidence linking the robbery to Russia.'

'He'd like that, wouldn't he?' Houston grunted contemptuously. 'Warmonger.'

It was a privilege of federal officials that they received priority over civilians when placing long-distance telephone calls. For example, an agent making a call to New York from the Treasury in Washington could usually reach his party in less than a quarter-hour. More important, ever since the federal government seized control of the nation's telephone companies in 1918 and began dictating rates, such calls were essentially free of charge.

Littlemore took advantage of these perquisites to call the American

Society for Psychical Research. A short time later, an operator rang him back with Dr Walter Prince on the line.

'Question for you, Doctor,' said Littlemore. 'Did you by any chance talk to Ed Fischer after I met you in your office?'

'Certainly,' said Dr Prince, his voice distant and broken up by the accumulated static of two hundred miles of telephone wire. 'I visited him at the sanitarium later that very day.'

'Did you tip him off that I was going to ask him when he first got wind of the bombing?'

'I mentioned there was a policeman interested in that information, yes.'

'I should have known,' declared Littlemore. 'He had me thinking he pulled off one of his magic tricks. Thanks, Dr Prince. That's all I needed.'

'I feel you are expressing skepticism about Mr Fischer's gifts, Captain.'

'Why would I be skeptical about a guy who thinks he's a Secret Service agent and the Popes are out to get him?'

'The gifted often feel persecuted, Captain. They are often unstable. It doesn't make their premonitions less valid.'

'Sorry, Dr Prince, I'm not buying.'

'Then how do you explain his foreknowledge of the bombing?'

Littlemore answered with a vituperation that surprised himself: 'I can't explain it,' he barked. 'But you know what? I don't care if he's the ghost of Christmas future. He's no use to me.'

The Willard Hotel, on Pennsylvania Avenue just down the street from the White House, used to be President Ulysses S. Grant's favorite watering hole when he needed a brandy after a long day at the office. Businessmen or their hirelings would lie in wait for the President in the flush hotel lobby, pouncing on Grant to make their case, ply him with liquor, and in general explain how much they could do for his Administration if only some vital permit were issued or lucrative contract signed. Grant called them 'lobbyists.'

Littlemore was making his way across this high-ceilinged lobby when a familiar, tall female figure approached him, clad in a well-fitted feminine version of a man's suit.

'Enjoying Washington, Agent Littlemore?' she asked below a sparkling chandelier.

'Evening, Mrs Cross,' said Littlemore.

'New necktie?'

Littlemore looked down. He was ordinarily a bow tie man, but in his first weeks on the job, Littlemore hadn't seen a single other Treasury agent who wore one. He'd mentioned this to Betty, who gave him a full-length tie as a present. 'You're going to tell me it's not tied right?' he asked.

'It's tied just fine. A little too tight.' She loosened it; he was able to breathe easier. 'That's better. Senator Fall wants to see you. I'm here to take you to him.'

Without waiting for an answer, Mrs Cross turned and walked toward the hotel's front door. Littlemore followed her sashaying form, first with his eyes, then with his legs. Outside, she climbed behind the wheel of a waiting car.

'You're the driver?' asked Littlemore, seating himself beside her.

'I'm the driver.' She started the car. 'Does that make you nervous?'

'I'm not nervous.'

Mrs Cross drove Littlemore along the Mall. Just before the Capitol, she turned and entered a poor neighborhood similar to the one into which he had mistakenly wandered his first day in Washington. She came to a halt behind another car in a small, unlit street sandwiched claustrophobically between opposing walls of brick row houses. Lights were on in several windows, but curtains made it impossible to see within. 'Maine Avenue,' said Mrs Cross. 'Used to be called Armory Place. Also known as Louse Alley. Good luck.'

From the car in front of them, the driver emerged and opened a passenger door, allowing Senator Fall to stretch himself out onto the street, a white ten-gallon hat over his drooping white mustache.

Littlemore stepped into the alley and joined him. Mrs Cross remained in her car, engine humming softly.

'Like 'em colored, Littlemore?' asked Fall. 'Best colored girls in the city are in this street. That's how come I love this town. Just three blocks from the Capitol.'

'Why are we meeting here, Mr Senator?'

'Seems your boss, Secretary Milksop, complained to President Wilson today that I was interfering with his investigation. I figured we should find a more out-of-the-way place to powwow.' Fall began walking up the street, with Littlemore at his side and the Senator's car following slowly behind them. 'What do you know about these two boys that Flynn's after?'

'What two boys?' asked Littlemore.

'Couple of Italians up in Boston. What the hell are their names? All I can think of is a sack of spaghetti.'

'Sacco and Vanzetti?'

'That's it,' said Fall.

'They were arrested for murdering a payroll clerk,' said Littlemore. 'What's Flynn got to do with them?'

'He thinks they're the political prisoners from the anarchist circulars.'

'That's crazy,' said Littlemore. 'When Reds say political prisoners, they mean Debs and the other anti-war guys Palmer and Big Bill put behind bars. Everybody knows that. You'd have to be some kind of boneheaded anarchist to say "Free the political prisoners" if you wanted to free two guys arrested for killing a payroll clerk in Boston. Nobody would know what you meant.'

'Well, Flynn's got something on them,' said Fall. 'He's planted an informant in their cell.'

'Where's he getting these ideas? He's not smart enough to be that stupid all by himself.'

'I was hoping you'd know. Now this house here -' Fall pointed to a large but run-down corner house – 'this one used to belong to a gal named Hall. Served Piper champagne in crystal glasses. Rich as us senators. They still tell stories about her girls. Well, it all played out like I said, didn't it? You found out the Russians were involved in the bombing, and Secretary Milksop buried it.'

'I didn't find Russian involvement, Mr Senator.'

'If the bombers used even a few bars of Russian metal to trick Customs, that's Russian involvement. How do you think the bombers got their hands on Soviet gold? I'll bet the whole crew of that Swedish ship turns out to be Russian.'

'Do you know everything I say to Mr Houston?' asked Littlemore.

'Pretty much. Walls have ears in this town, Littlemore. Got to know what the other guy knows if you want to stay ahead of him.'

'We're not sure the Swedish ship has the stolen gold,' said Littlemore.

'And Houston ain't going to lift a finger to find out, is he? Well, I am. I already talked to Baker, the Secretary of War. He'll speak with his old friend Daniels, the Navy Secretary. I'll have a couple of warships on that Swedish ocean liner within forty-eight hours. We'll know soon enough what she's carrying.'

Littlemore chewed his toothpick. 'That's impressive, Mr Senator.'

'We're the United goddamn States of America. What are we supposed to do after they bomb the crap out of us? Wring our hands? Turn the other cheek? Hope they just go away?' Fall signaled his driver and spat on the pavement, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief. 'This damn Mexican situation's heating up. They're too greedy, these Mexicans. What do they want to take all our oil for? It's going to take some serious ambassadoring to keep Harding out of trouble.'

'What will Harding want to do, sir?'

'Whatever I tell him. 'The Senator stepped into his car. 'I'll let you know what we find on the Swede. Mrs Cross will give you a lift back. You should get to know her. Not as tough as she pretends.'

'How long you been working for Senator Fall?' Littlemore asked Mrs Cross as she drove past row after row of the bunker-like, concrete, 'temporary' War and Navy buildings squatting on the Mall – temporary by official description, permanent by appearance.

'A few years. I work for several of the senators. Mr Harding, for example.'

'For Harding? Wow.'

'I do quite a lot for Mr Harding. On loan from Senator Fall, of course.'

'You could end up in the White House.'

'I've ended up in the White House many times.'

Littlemore thought that over. 'You got a first name, Mrs Cross?'

'Grace.'

'Nice name.'

'It's a state I left long ago. Everyone leaves their home state when they come to Washington. Here we are. The Willard Hotel. Good night, New York.'

The next morning, Littlemore received a telephone call in his closet- sized office at the United States Treasury. The operator informed him that New York City was calling. It turned out to be Officer Stankiewicz from police headquarters.

'What is it, Stanky?' said Littlemore.

'It's Fischer, Cap,' said Stankiewicz. 'He keeps calling and calling and sending wires for you. Says you're supposed to be getting him out of the sanitarium.'

'Oh, for the love of Pete,' replied Littlemore.

'He says you were going to talk with his brother-in-law – a guy named, what was it, Bishop or something? Anything you want me to do?'

'Just ignore him. He'll stop.'

'Okay. How's Washington?'

'Wait a second,' said Littlemore. '"Bishop or something"? Did the name sound like Bishop, or did it remind you of Bishop?'

'Yeah, Bishop or something.'

'No, I'm asking you if – do me a favor. Go get Fischer's file. I'll hold.'

A few minutes later, Stankiewicz was back on the line: 'Got it.'

'Okay, find me the name of Fischer's brother-in-law,' said Littlemore. 'He's the guy who went to Canada and had Fischer locked up as a lunatic. His name should be on the Canadian papers.'

'Okay, here it is: Pope. Robert Pope. That's why I thought Bishop.'

'How do you like that?' said Littlemore. 'The Popes.'

The Treasury's personnel department was located on the second floor. Littlemore was already familiar with it; he had been poring over personnel files for three weeks. 'Say, Molly,' he asked one of the girls in that office, 'is Treasury in charge of the Secret Service?'

'Sure is,' said Molly. 'Why?'

'A guy said that to me a couple of weeks ago, and I didn't believe him,' replied Littlemore. 'Seems he was right about a lot of things.'

A few minutes later, Littlemore was upstairs in a filing room flipping through decades of United States Secret Service employment records. He knew in advance he would eventually find the name he was looking for, improbable though it was. And he did.

The folder was virtually empty, containing only a bare indication of the year of hiring and the location of service. The year was 1916, the place New York City. After that, a few more dates were penciled in, terminating in late 1917.

Littlemore dropped the manila folder on Secretary Houston's desk. 'It might have helped, sir,' said Littlemore, 'if you'd mentioned to me that the one man trying to warn people about the bombing was an employee of ours.'

Houston reacted with astonishment.

'You didn't know Ed Fischer was an agent?' asked Littlemore.

'I had no idea. I told you – I only became Secretary in February of this year.'

'How does somebody get to be an agent?'

'The Director of the Secret Service makes those hires.'

'Who's the director?'

'Bill Moran.'

'Can I talk to him?'

Houston called for his secretary and ordered him to find Mr Moran. In the ensuing silence, Houston stood at a window, hands crossed behind his back, surveying the White House grounds. 'I won't miss this job, Littlemore. How am I supposed to balance an eight-billion-dollar budget with revenues of four billion? We live beyond our means. Neither a borrower nor a lender be – that's what my father told me. Now that's all I do – borrow and lend.'

'You're not going to miss being a Cabinet member? You're on top of the world, Mr Houston.'

'What, because I hosted a dinner for the British Ambassador last night? My wife likes that sort of thing. I can't stand it. Every word out of one's mouth a lie. Well, it will all be over in five months, when Harding takes office. I may resign sooner. Go abroad. Yes, I think I might.'

Houston's secretary came back in with William Moran, head of the United States Secret Service. Mr Moran positively denied having hired Edwin Fischer. 'There – you see,' said Moran, looking at the file. 'Fischer was hired in 1916. I didn't take over until the next year.'

'Who was the director before you?' asked Houston.

'Flynn was.'

'Flynn?' repeated Littlemore. 'Not Big Bill Flynn?'

'Sure,' said Moran. 'Before he became Chief of the Bureau, Bill Flynn was head of the Secret Service.'

On November 2, 1920, having run full tilt through the vast, echoing Union Station to make his train, Littlemore settled into his seat, breathing hard, and realized that it was Election Day. He further realized that he wouldn't be voting. His train would arrive in Manhattan well after the polls had closed. The thought caused him a surprisingly sharp pang of disappointment.

As the train passed one small town after another, Littlemore felt an inexplicable sympathy: with the small frame houses, with the smoke rising from their chimneys, with the little piles of firewood stacked outside, residue of a man's labor – sympathy with all the quiet, hard, uncounted lives of which no stories would ever be written. Then Littlemore imagined the citizenry in each of these towns lining up to vote for their country's leaders. It filled him with pride – and with a sense of estrangement at missing it for the first time. But then Littlemore was not even certain he was entitled to vote. Technically he might now be a resident of the District of Columbia, and Washingtonians did not vote for the nation's president.

Not that his vote mattered. That was the oddity of democracy: nothing mattered more than voting, and voting didn't matter. In any event, Warren Harding, the Republican, was certain to win; the Democratic candidate, James Cox, had about as much chance as Eugene Debs, the Socialist candidate, who was still in prison. Which meant that Secretary Houston, a Democrat, would not be a secretary much longer, while the Republican Senator Fall would soon be Secretary of State.

Women all across America celebrated on that November Tuesday, when for the first time they exercised the national suffrage. At many polling booths, men stepped aside to make way for the womenfolk as an act of courtesy, but the women wouldn't have it, insisting on taking their place in line and waiting as long as the men had to. Back home in their kitchens and parlors, they gathered in little groups, treating themselves to sparkling cider, a lawful substitute for prohibited champagne.

Blacks were not received quite so chivalrously at the polls; nor did the revelry subsequent to their voting have the same genteel character. When, for example, two black men had the temerity to exercise their suffrage in Ocoee, Florida, the Ku Klux Klan decided to set an example. Two black churches were sacked, a black neighborhood was burned to the ground, and some thirty or sixty black people were killed, one of them strung up a telephone pole and hanged by the neck.

But the country elected itself a new president, and there was great festivity and a galvanization of energies throughout the land.

Back in New York, the next day, Littlemore paid another visit to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's temporary field offices at the Astor Hotel.

'Look what the cat drug in,' said Bill Flynn, Chief of the Bureau. 'It's Littleboy.'

'I need to ask you some questions, Flynn. About Ed Fischer.'

Flynn addressed the two large, dark-suited men who, as always, stood on either side of his desk. 'A New York cop wants to ask me questions? Is this jerk-off looking to get his head busted in?'

'Hey jerk-off,' inquired one of Flynn’s deputies, 'are you looking to get your head busted in?'

Littlemore displayed his United States Treasury badge.

'Let me see that,' said Flynn. He inspected the badge. 'World's going down the toilet, that's all I got to say.' He threw the badge onto the floor at Littlemore's feet. 'Too bad I don't answer to T-men.'

'You'll answer to me, Flynn.' Littlemore handed him a letter, signed by Secretary David Houston of the United States Treasury, instructing Flynn to respond fully to any questions Special Agent Littlemore might ask concerning Flynn s tenure as Director of the Secret Service. Flynn read the letter, then let it too fall to the floor.

'I got news for you, hotshot,' he said. 'I don't take orders from Secretary Houston either. I take my orders from General Palmer. Get out of here.'

Littlemore took another letter from his pocket. This one was signed by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer.

'Son of a bitch,' said Flynn. He spoke to his deputies again: 'Okay, you boys clear out.'

'Have one of them pick up my badge first,' replied Littlemore.

'What are you goons standing around for?' Flynn said to his deputies. 'Pick up the man's badge.'

'Okay, so I hired him,' Flynn acknowledged several minutes later. 'So what? The guy was a nut-ball.'

'How'd you meet him?'

Big Bill Flynn, whose barrel chest and gut didn't need any additional fortification, unwrapped a red-and-white-striped candy from the bowl of treats that sat on his desk. 'Fischer starts sending letters to Wilson in 1916, okay? Your usual anti-war garbage. But there's something funny about them, like he knew the President personally. So I send a couple of my boys to check him out and tell him to knock it off if he doesn't want to end up in jail. You know.'

'Sure.'

'So my boys tell me the guy is soft in the head, but he works for the French in one of their outfits.'

'The French High Mission.'

'That's it – leave it to the Frogs to hire a nut-ball, huh?' Flynn's torso heaved with mirth at his riposte.

'Only a moron would hire a nut-ball,' agreed Littlemore.

'Yeah, that's a good one, only a moron would-' Flynn interrupted himself, comprehension dawning. 'Why, I ought to-'

'How'd you get involved?'

Flynn grumbled, but continued: 'When I heard where Fischer worked, I figured it couldn't hurt to have somebody planted in French governmentary circles. So I played the guy, buttered him up, told him he could be an agent for the Secret Service. Told him he was a spy. You know, the whole drill. When I took over the Bureau, I kept him on the string. But the guy was cracked. I never got anything from him. Saw him no more than half a dozen times. Total waste.'

'Where would you meet him?' asked Littlemore.

'Why?'

'Just answer the question, Flynn.'

'Here in New York. Train station.'

'When was the last time?'

'This summer. June or July. After the Convention. General Palmer sent McAdoo to meet with some Republicans at Grand Central to see if they could work something out. Fischer was totally off the deep end. Never saw him again.'

'Did Fischer say anything to you about Wall Street?' asked Littlemore.

'Are you kidding?'

'I'm not kidding.'

'No, he didn't say nothing about Wall Street. You think I would have let the NYPD have him if he knew anything? I'll tell you the funniest thing. After the bombing, Fischer's brother-in-law, a guy named Pope, he calls the Bureau. Says that Fischer is claiming to be an undercover federal agent. Wants to know if there's any truth to it. I get on the phone and say it's a crock. Pope thanks me, says he just wanted to be sure, and has Fischer locked up the next day. He's been in the loony bin ever since. Ain't that a laugher?'

A message was waiting for Littlemore when he returned to his office in the Sub-Treasury on Wall Street, informing him that Senator Fall had called for him from Washington. Littlemore rang the operator.

'That you, Littlemore?' asked Fall some minutes later over the static.

'Yes, sir, Mr Senator.'

'We intercepted the Swedish ship. No gold.'

'You mean no Treasury gold?' asked Littlemore.

'No Treasury gold, no Russian gold, no fool's gold,' answered Fall. 'No gold at all. The Captain said the harbor authorities in New York told him to leave it on the dock.'

'He's lying. Secretary Houston made them take it back. Did the navy guys search the ship?' asked Littlemore.

'Of course they searched the ship. High and low.'

'But-'

'I'm too busy, Littlemore,' said Fall. 'You figure it out. Get back to me when you do.'

Fall rang off. It made no sense, Littlemore thought. Why would they leave the gold on the dock – wherever the gold came from? Could someone in Customs be working with the thieves? Littlemore put his coat on. He'd have to go down to the harbor himself. As he was leaving, his telephone rang again. A Mr James Speyer was asking for him downstairs.

'What can I do for you, Mr Speyer?' asked Littlemore in the rotunda of the Sub-Treasury.

'You can give me my painting back,' answered Speyer in his German accent. 'At the police station they didn't know what I was talking about. They told me you worked at the Treasury now.'

Littlemore apologized, explaining that he had put the Rembrandt in a special lockup to ensure its safety. 'We could go over and get it now, if you want,' he said.

'Excellent. My driver can take us.'

Inside Speyer's car, Littlemore asked, 'How's the wife?'

'Better, thank you.'

'Business in Hamburg work out okay?'

'Capitally,' said Speyer. 'The funds are all in Mexico now – despite the Morgan people's best efforts.'

'I hear things in Mexico are getting pretty hot.'

'They certainly are,' agreed Speyer. 'Bad for Arnold Brighton; good for me.'

'You know Brighton?'

'I know his oil fields in Mexico are worth hundreds of millions. I just returned from Mexico City, as a matter of fact. Peculiar to be somewhere where America is so hated. More than even in Germany. I suppose we might feel the same way about them if they'd occupied our capital and taken half our country.'

'We did that to Mexico?' asked Littlemore.

'The Mexican-American War, Detective. Or the American Invasion, as they call it south of the border. My Rembrandt had better not be damaged.'

At police headquarters on Centre Street, Littlemore led Speyer to a special safe room in the evidence storage locker. Once the layers of protective wrapping were peeled away, the painting itself looked small and fragile. 'Undamaged, Mr Speyer?'

'Undamaged,' Speyer agreed.

The men stared at the self-portrait. It was from the artist's older age, showing him wrinkled and red-cheeked, with pouches under wise, misty eyes.

'How'd he do that?' asked Littlemore.

'Do what?'

'He looks like he knows he's going to die,' said Littlemore. 'Like he – like he -'

'Accepts it?'

'Yeah, but at the same time like he isn't ready to go yet. If they hate Americans so much, why don't they hate you down in Mexico, Speyer?'

'Because they think I'm German,' replied Speyer with a smile, pronouncing the last word Cherman.

At the harbor, Littlemore spoke with a Customs agent, who denied that the Swedish ship had left its contraband gold on the dock. 'You're sure?' asked Littlemore. 'The Swede sailed out of the harbor with all the gold on board?'

'Wouldn't know about that,' said the agent. 'When we find dirty goods, we alert the departments. Maybe the goods get impounded, maybe they get destroyed, maybe they go back on board. That's up to the department.'

'What department?'

'If it's guns, the War Department. Liquor, the Revenuers. This was gold, so Treasury.'

'Who do you notify at Treasury?'

'All's I do, Mister, I send in the piece of paper. You want more, talk to Treasury.'

On Wall Street late that afternoon, as Littlemore mounted the steps to the Greek facade of the Treasury Building, a messenger boy from the Morgan Bank tapped him on the shoulder.

'Detective Littlemore?' said the boy.

'Yeah?' said Littlemore.

'Mr Lamont wants to see you right away. In his office.'

'Good for him,' said Littlemore, continuing up the steps.

'But he wants you now, sir,' said the boy. 'You're supposed to follow me.'

'Tell Lamont he can come to my office,' answered Littlemore.

The phone was already ringing when he got upstairs.

'Let me guess, Lamont,' said Littlemore into the mouthpiece. 'Your man tailing Speyer told you I met with him today.'

'Are you aware,' asked Lamont, 'that James Speyer is profiting from the Mexican confiscation of American property in Mexico?'

'Not my problem,' said Littlemore.

'But the man's anti-American. Surely you see it now. Why haven't you arrested him in connection with the bombing?'

'Come off it. I'm not arresting somebody just because he's your competition in Mexico.'

'We've been over and over this, Littlemore,' said Lamont. 'Speyer threatened me. He threatened to retaliate against the Morgan Bank. Two weeks before the bombing.'

'It wasn't Speyer,' said Littlemore. 'I told you: it was a man named Pesqueira, and it didn't have anything to do with the bombing.'

'It was Speyer. Did you ever talk to Pesqueira? Talk to him. You'll see that Speyer's lying. James Speyer’s a traitor. He wouldn't care how many American lives were lost. A year ago I got a cable from Mexico. It was the middle of September 1919. Speyer was in Mexico City celebrating their Independence Day. He was urging the Mexican government to seize American mines and oil wells, telling them that he would provide the funds to keep them in operation.'

'Mr Lamont,' said Littlemore. 'This is the last time I'm going to say it: not my problem. So long.'

Chapter Sixteen

Their train broke down north of Vienna, coming to a halt in the woods. Hours and hours went by. Finally another train – every seat of which was already occupied – pulled up next to them; they rode the rest of the way to Vienna upright and jam-packed. When they finally arrived, it was evening. In the motorized taxi they took from the station, Younger ordered the driver to stop in front of the opera house, about a block short of the Hotel Bristol.

'What is it?' asked Colette. Then she saw: a knot of policemen was gathered in front of the hotel, eyeing everyone who entered or exited. Younger instructed the driver to make inquiries, explaining, truthfully, that he didn't want to check into a hotel where they might be in danger.

From across the avenue, still in the taxi, they watched their driver consult with an officer and nod in comprehension as he received an account of what the police were doing there.

'They can't be looking for us,' said Colette.

'No?' said Younger.

Their taxi driver was now pointing an accusatory finger at his own automobile. The officer peered in their direction through the darkness. Then he and a colleague began walking slowly toward them.

'Well – shall we give ourselves up?' asked Younger.

'But we've done nothing wrong,' said Colette.

'Nothing at all,' said Younger. 'Leaving a pile of dead bodies next to Prague castle, fleeing the country – we can explain everything. If they don't believe us, we can show them Hans Gruber's dog tag as proof.'

Colette's hand went to her throat, where Hans Gruber's military tag had been clasped for six years. The police officers were getting close. 'The engine's still running,' she said.

Younger jumped into the front seat, put the car in reverse, and floored the gas pedal. The policemen broke into a run, chasing them.

'Where will we go?' Colette asked, holding on to Luc in the backseat.

'One catastrophe at a time,' answered Younger, turning the car around. Tires screaming, they roared off down the Ringstrasse. The policemen, panting, abandoned the chase.

Sigmund Freud, opening his door at 19 Berggasse, took a long puff at his cigar before speaking. Younger's face bore several cuts, and his overcoat looked as if he had rolled down a mountainside in it and then smashed through a car's windshield for good measure. Colette's cheek was bruised. Only Luc, scrupulously washed and brushed by his sister on board the train, was no worse for wear, although his knees were skinned and his brown wool suit, with short trousers, gave him a strangely provincial look.

Freud addressed Younger: 'I assume you and Miss Rousseau didn't give each other your injuries?'

'The police-'Younger began.

'Are looking for you – I know,' said Freud. 'Your friend Count Kinsky came by to warn you. He says the police believe you may have killed a man in Prague.'

'Three,' said Younger.

'I beg your pardon?' asked Freud.

'I killed three men.'

'I see,' said Freud. 'Miss Rousseau, tell me Younger didn't kill your fiancé in a fit of jealous rage.'

'He wasn't my fiancé,' said Colette.

Freud raised both eyebrows: 'Younger killed the wrong men?'

'No,' she answered. 'He killed the right men.'

'I see,' said Freud again.

'Dr Freud,' said Younger, 'I should warn you it may not be wise to let us in. I don't know how things are here, but in America it's a crime to take a murderer into your house.'

'Did you commit murder?' asked Freud.

'I may have,' said Younger. 'I believe I did.'

'It wasn't murder,' Colette replied sharply. 'And if it was, I only wish you could have murdered him a thousand more times.'

'Ah,' said Freud. 'Well, don't just stand there. Come in.'

A fire crackled in an old-fashioned porcelain stove in the Freuds' sitting room. Younger and Freud were drinking brandy. Tea had been served to Colette, but she ended up taking brandy as well, out of Younger's snifter. They had told Freud the entire story, and silence had fallen.

'What a lovely tablecloth,' said Colette.

'Is it?' asked Freud.

'The lace,' she answered. 'It's lovely.'

'I'll tell Minna you said so; she sewed it,' replied Freud. 'Would you like a blanket, my dear?'

Colette was holding herself as if outside on a chill night. 'Why didn't I kill him?' she asked with sudden animation. 'Why was I such a weakling?'

'You don't know?' said Freud.

'No.'

Freud began trimming a cigar, watching Colette out of the corner of his eye. He offered one to Younger, who declined. 'The conventional answer,' said Freud, 'would be that your conscience rebelled at the last moment, convincing you that revenge is a sin.'

'Revenge is a sin,' she said.

'Everyone wants revenge,' answered Freud. 'The problem is that we usually seek it against the wrong person. At least you sought it against the right one. But your religious compunctions – they're not the reason you didn't kill him.'

'I know,' she agreed. 'I believed it was the right thing to do – with all my heart. I still do. I shouldn't, but I do. But then why couldn't I pull the trigger?'

'For the same reason, I suspect, your brother doesn't talk.'

Colette looked at Freud, perplexed.

'Do you have something else to tell us, my dear?' asked Freud.

'What do you mean?'

'Your brother has something to say,' said Freud. 'As a result of which he says nothing.'

'I – you know what's wrong with my brother?' asked Colette.

'I know exactly what's wrong with him,' said Freud, drawing on his cigar. 'But first things first. You have only two options, as I see it. Turn yourselves in or leave the country.'

'We can't turn ourselves in,' said Younger. 'We'd be handed over to the police in Prague and jailed for who knows how long. Eventually they'll find Gruber's mother, so they'll learn we were looking for him. They'd ask us why. If we told them the truth, they'd conclude that Colette was bent on a revenge killing, which would be true – and which would be murder, even if we could prove what Gruber did in the war, which we can't. If we refused to tell them why we were looking for him, they'd know we were hiding something, and then they probably wouldn't believe anything else we said. Either way, we might end up convicted.'

'Then you have to get out,' said Freud. At that moment, the lamps in the room flickered. 'Blast it – we're going to lose power again. It happens at least once a week.'

Freud waited, cigar poised in the air. The flickering abated; the lights stayed on.

'Perhaps we'll be all right,' he resumed.

'Please, Dr Freud,' said Colette. 'Can you explain what's the matter with my brother?'

'I'll tell you what I know, Fraulein, but the concepts will be new to you and strange. Brandy?' Taking his time, Freud refilled his own and Younger's glasses.

'Well, where to begin?' said Freud. He was seated again, his legs crossed, in one hand a cigar, in the other his brandy. 'Twenty-five years ago, I discovered a path to unseen provinces of our mental life, which I may have been the first mortal ever to enter. There I found a hell of inexpressible fears and longings, for which men and women might have burned in earlier eras. A man cannot expect such insight more than once in a lifetime. But last year, I made a new discovery that, in my more vainglorious moments, I think might even surpass the first. No one will believe it, but that will be nothing new. It came to me from studying the war neuroses – indeed in part from studying your brother, Miss Rousseau. Not that your brother has a neurosis, strictly speaking, but his condition is similar. I want to be clear about one thing: he requires treatment. Wherever you go next, you should not simply leave him as he is. His case is straightforward enough. I could cure him myself, I expect, in – I don't know – eight weeks.'

'Cure him?' repeated Colette. 'Completely?'

'I should think so.'

Colette didn't know how to respond.

'You sent us to Jauregg,' said Younger. 'Why?'

'Many choose to treat their psychological disorders mechanistically. Miss Rousseau has to decide if she really wants her brother analyzed. I'm not sure she does. Twice now, she has brought her brother to Vienna but refused to commit herself to the time an analysis would require. And perhaps she's right: after all, it may not be pleasant for her.'

'For me?' asked Colette. 'Why?'

'I told you last year,' said Freud. 'The truths that psychoanalysis unearths are never irrelevant to other family members. Fraulein, you know what it is to yearn for revenge. Your brother is taking revenge too – by not speaking.'

'On whom?' asked Colette.

'Perhaps on you.'

'Whatever for?'

'You can't tell us?' asked Freud.

'I can't imagine what you're talking about,' answered Colette.

'It's just speculation, my dear. I don't know the answer.'

'But you said you knew what was wrong with him,' said Colette.

'I do. I understood it last summer, two months after you left. It was child's play, as a matter of fact. Younger, what is the boy's most revealing symptom?'

'I have no idea,' said Younger.

'Come – I just gave it away.'

Younger chafed at Freud's habit of luring him with analytic conundrums, particularly under the present circumstances, but all the same, the lure took. Child's play? 'His game,' said Younger. 'Something to do with his fishing reel game.'

'Exactly,' said Freud. 'Miss Rousseau told me that her grandmother played a German hide-and-seek game with her brother when he was little. He is saying fort and da when he unspools and rewinds his reel – gone and there. What does it mean?'

Younger thought about it: 'When did he start?'

'In 1914,' said Freud.

'He's reliving the death of his parents,' said Younger.

'Obviously. Over and over. But why?'

'To undo the feeling of loss?'

'No. He isn't undoing anything. He's making himself experience the single worst moment of his life again and again.'

Cigar smoke had filled the candlelit room with its heavy, heady odor.

'It's the key to the riddle,' said Freud. 'All the war neurotics repeat. They have a kind of compulsion – a repetition compulsion – a need to reenact or reexperience the trauma that has given rise to their condition. And they're all repeating the same thing: death, or the moment when they came closest to it. Normally, we have defenses – fortifications, physiological and psychological – that keep our mortality away from us, out of our consciousness. If these fortifications are breached, if in a moment of unexpected trauma, mortality punctures these defenses, its terror rushes in and starts a kind of mental conflagration – a fire very difficult to extinguish – but a fire to which a man wants to return again and again. The shell-shocked man will relive his trauma when asleep; or in broad daylight, he will conjure a bomb going off in the noise of a door slamming; he may even reenact the episode through bodily symptoms.'

'Why?' asked Younger. 'To discharge the fear?'

'For a long time I tried to understand it that way,' replied Freud. 'Discharging fear would be pleasurable. At least it would lessen displeasure. Every psychological phenomenon, I thought, was motivated at bottom by the drive to increase pleasure or lessen displeasure. But I was trying to fit facts to theory, when I should have been fitting theory to facts. I had just begun to understand it when you were last here. The war taught me something I should have seen ages ago: we have a drive beyond the pleasure principle. Another instinct, as fundamental as hunger, as irresistible as love.'

'What instinct?' asked Colette.

'A death instinct. More tea, Miss Rousseau?'

'No, thank you.'

'You mean a desire to kill?' asked Younger.

'That's one side of it,' said Freud. 'But fundamentally it's a longing for death. For destruction. Not only someone else's; also our own.'

'You think people want to die?' asked Colette.

'I do,' said Freud. 'It's built into our cells, our very atoms. There are two elemental forces in the universe. One draws matter toward matter. That is how life comes into being and how it propagates. In physics, this force is called gravity; in psychology, love. The other force tears matter apart. It is the force of disunification, disintegration, destruction. If I'm correct, every planet, every star in the universe is not only drawn toward the others by gravity, but also pushed away from them by a force of repulsion we can't see. Within an organism, this force is what drives the animal to seek death, as moths seek a flame.'

'But you can cure it – this death instinct?' asked Colette.

'One cannot cure an instinct, Miss Rousseau,' said Freud. 'One cannot eliminate it. One can, however, make it more conscious and in this way relieve its pathological effects. When an instinct creates in us an impulse that we don't act on, the impulse does not go away. It may subsist unaffected. It may intensify. It may be turned to other objects, for better or worse. Or it may produce pathological symptoms. Such symptoms can be cured.'

'I wouldn't have thought,' said Younger, 'that Luc's muteness aimed at death.'

'No, his muteness has another function. That would be the point of analyzing him – to uncover that function. It's undoubtedly connected to his parents' death, but there's something more too. Possibly their death reminded him of a scene he had witnessed even earlier. Did your father mistreat you, Miss Rousseau?'

'Mistreat me? In what way?'

'In any way.'

'Not at all,' said Colette.

'No? Did he favor you?'

'Luc was his favorite,' said Colette. 'I was a girl.'

Freud nodded. 'Well, it's a pity you can't remain in Vienna, but I don't see how it's possible. Vienna is a much smaller city than New York. You'll be noticed here. The police will have everyone watching; someone will report you.'

'May I ask you a question, Dr Freud?' asked Colette.

'Of course.'

'These two forces you describe,' she said. 'They're good and evil, aren't they? The instinct for love is good, and the instinct for death is evil.'

Freud smiled: 'In science, my dear, there is no such thing as good or evil. The death instinct is part of our biology. You're familiar with chromatolysis – the natural process by which cells die? Every one of our cells brings about its own destruction at its allotted time. That's the death instinct in operation. Now if a cell fails to die, what happens? It keeps dividing, reproducing, endlessly, unnaturally. It becomes a cancer. That's what cancer is, after all – cells afflicted with the loss of their will to die. The death instinct is not evil, Miss Rousseau. In its proper place it's every bit as essential to our well-being as its opposite.'

That night, after Freud had retired and Colette and Luc were installed in one of the children's old bedrooms and the apartment fell silent, Younger smoked a cigarette on the veranda. He had felt claustrophobic inside; on the little balcony overlooking the courtyard, he felt claustrophobic outside as well. A door opened within; Younger imagined it might be Colette, coming to join him.

'No – it's only me,' said Freud's voice behind him. The older man stepped out onto the veranda. 'So what do you think of my death instinct?'

'I'm for it,' said Younger.

Freud smiled. 'You're still at war, my boy. You never demobilized. Ten years ago, I wouldn't have foreseen you as the instinctual kind. You were more – repressed.'

'I read somewhere that repression is unhealthy. A world-famous psychologist has proven it.'

'Whose ideas you don't accept.'

'Ten years ago,' said Younger, reflecting, 'I saw your ideas as moral anarchy. Exploding all propriety. But you were right. I guess I don't believe in morality anymore.'

'Ah yes, that's what my critics say: Freud the libertine, Freud the amoral.' He inhaled the night air – a deep breath of age and judgment. 'It's true, I'm no believer in Sunday school morality. Love thy neighbor as thyself is an absurd principle: quite impossible, unless one has a very unusual neighbor. But when it comes to a sense of justice, I believe I can measure myself with the best men I've known. All my life I've tried to be honorable – not to harm, not to take advantage – even though I know perfectly well that by doing so I've made myself an anvil for others' brutality, their disloyalty, their ambition.'

'Why then?' asked Younger. 'Why do you do it?'

'I could give you a plausible psychological explanation,' said Freud. 'But the truth is I have no idea. Why I – and for that matter my children – have to be thoroughly decent human beings is beyond my comprehension. It is merely a fact. An anchor.'

There was a slight pause before Younger said: 'You think I need an anchor?'

'No. You have one already.'

'You mean a sense of justice?'

'I meant love,' said Freud. 'Which is why this bombing of yours worries me.'

'The Wall Street bombing?'

'Yes. It may be a harbinger of something new. Not its violence – that's to be expected. I was reading the other day a description of one of those happy quarters of the earth where primitive societies flourish in peace and contentment, knowing no aggression. I didn't believe a word of it. Where there are men, there will be violence. Fortunately, the death instinct almost never operates alone. Our two instincts are nearly always obliged to work together – which gives sexuality its violent character, but also tempers the death drive. That's what makes your bombing so troubling.'

'Because it was unalloyed?'

'Exactly,' said Freud. 'The death instinct unbound. Freed from the life instincts, freed from the ideals by which the ego assesses its actions – conscience. Perhaps the war has unleashed it, or perhaps an ideology. Men have always worshipped death. There are death gods in every ancient religion. Goddesses as well, some of them quite beautiful, like Atropos with her shears, cutting life's threads – which is further evidence, by the way, of man's attraction to death. They haven't caught the perpetrators, have they?'

'Of the bombing?' asked Younger. 'Not yet.'

'Perhaps because they're dead.'

It took Younger a moment before he understood: 'You think they killed themselves in the blast – deliberately.'

'Maybe they did, maybe they didn't,' said Freud. 'Maybe they'll give others the idea. But yes, that's what worries me.'

Early the next morning, while Freud was out for his daily constitutional, Oktavian Kinsky called. 'I've come to offer you my services, Mademoiselle,' he said to Colette in the Freuds' sitting room. 'I heard what happened outside the Hotel Bristol last night. I thought I might find you here, and I also thought you might want discreet transportation to the railway station.'

'You're very kind, Count Oktavian,' said Colette. 'I don't know how to thank you.'

'Not at all, Mademoiselle,' he replied. 'A nobleman's first duty is not to the police, but to the beautiful woman the police are pursuing.'

'Especially the nobleman who reported the woman to the police in the first place,' said Younger.

'Stratham,' Colette rebuked Younger. 'Why would you say that?'

Oktavian was abashed. 'I'm afraid he's right.'

'They found your business cards,' said Younger.

'That's just it,' replied Oktavian abjectly. 'Several of my cards were discovered near the scene of your – your misadventure. The Czech authorities wired the Vienna police, who put me in a cell as if I'd committed a crime. They said a man named Hans Gruber had been killed in Prague. They asked me if I knew him. What was I to do? Naturally I explained that you, Miss Rousseau, had journeyed to Braunau in romantic pursuit of Herr Gruber, and that Dr Younger had driven to Braunau in romantic pursuit of you, together with your brother, in a motorcycle I'd rented for him. I'm sure the police have everything wrong, as they always do. I told them that neither of you could possibly have been involved in a killing. I'm so sorry; it's all my fault.'

'No,' said Colette, 'it's our fault the police came for you.'

'Did you tell them,' asked Younger, 'that we were acquainted with the Freuds?'

'Certainly not,' said Oktavian. 'One doesn't reveal confidences to the police. By the way, where is my motorcycle, if you don't mind? I understand you arrived at the hotel last night by taxi. Did you leave the motorcycle at the station?'

'The police didn't tell you?' asked Younger.

'Tell me what?'

Younger beckoned to Luc. 'Count Kinsky wants to know where his motorcycle is,' Younger said to the boy.

Luc pulled from a pocket a small round mirror with a piece of snapped metal at one end. Oktavian took the offering with blinking eyes. From his other pocket, Luc produced a bent wheel spoke.

'Oh, dear,' said Oktavian.

'Enjoyed it immensely,' said Younger. 'Agile little vehicle.'

'Oh, dear,' Oktavian repeated, swallowing drily. 'Well, they say debtor's prison is not nearly so unpleasant as it used to be.'

'Wait – there's one more item,' said Younger, withdrawing from his jacket a bank draft, which he made out to Oktavian Kinsky.

Oktavian stared at the draft. 'This isn't enough for a motorcycle, Doctor,' he said. 'It's enough for a motorcycle and three new automobiles.'

'I know,' said Younger. 'And still not enough to repay you.'

There was nothing to pack. Their belongings were all at the hotel and therefore irretrievable. In the courtyard, they were saying goodbye to Minna when Freud returned from his morning walk, accompanied by his wife, Martha.

'You're going already?' Freud asked Younger and Colette.

'Yes,' replied Younger. 'Oktavian is taking us to the station. Every moment we stay, we put you in danger.'

'Mrs Freud and I have been discussing it, Miss Rousseau,' said Freud. 'Let the boy remain behind. With us.'

'I couldn't,' said Colette.

'Why not? It would be a boon to Martha. We haven't had a child in the house for a long time.'

'But I couldn't,' repeated Colette.

'It might make your escape easier,' interjected Oktavian. 'The police are looking for a couple with a little boy. They're sure to be keeping watch at the railway stations.'

'I've never been away from Luc,' said Colette.

'Never?' repeated Freud. 'You left him to go to Braunau just the other day. With no assurance you would ever return.'

Colette frowned. 'There was only one thing in the world I would have done that for. And now I-'

'Fraulein,' said Freud gently but pointedly, 'you have had your brother in your care for six years and never obtained treatment for him. This was probably wise on your part, wise beyond your years, because the care he would have received almost anywhere in the world would have been useless or even detrimental. But you will be doing him a great disservice now if you deny him the treatment he needs. He is at a precarious age. If he remains as he is for much longer, it will likely have permanent effects on his adulthood.' Freud paused. 'I have an additional, medical reason for my proposal. Your brother will have a better chance at a cure if he is treated in your absence.'

'In my absence?' repeated Colette. 'Why?'

'He improves when away from you,' answered Freud. 'Younger, did the boy communicate with you when you were traveling with him?'

'Yes – he wrote me notes.'

'You didn't tell me,' Colette said to Younger.

'It's natural, Miss Rousseau, for the boy to do better outside his immediate family – and natural on your part to resent it.'

'I don't resent it.'

'No? Well, I can tell you nothing else right now, but you are almost certainly involved in his symptoms. Your behavior for the last six years and his are intertwined in some fashion. You may even be the cause of his condition.'

Younger could see that Colette was distraught. 'Can I speak with Stratham for a moment?' she asked.

'Of course,' said Freud.

They withdrew to the stairwell. 'Tell me I'm not the cause,' she whispered, desperately. 'Am I the cause?'

'I don't know.'

'What should I do?'

'Leave him here, without question,' said Younger. 'We may not make it out of Austria. If we're caught and he's with us, they'll put him in some kind of Czech institution – an orphanage or worse. He could be there for years.'

'But how will we get him back?'

'If we get out?' said Younger. 'Easily. We'll send someone for him.'

Colette steeled herself, and they returned to the courtyard. She hesitated – then put the question to her brother, asking what he wanted to do. The boy looked at Younger.

'You want my opinion?' asked Younger.

The boy nodded.

'Stay behind.' Younger decided to put it in terms of the courage Luc would need: 'It will be hard on you, but you'll be helping your sister and me. After we reach safety, you'll follow.'

Luc thought about it. His eyes were deep – deep enough, Younger suspected, to have seen through his tactic. Then the boy took a few steps until he was standing between Freud and his wife. He looked up at Colette, his expressionless face indicating that he had made his decision.

'Wire us the moment you can,' said Freud.

Outside the Westbahnhof railway station, policemen stood guard, demanding papers from everyone who went in.

'It's worse than I thought,' said Oktavian. 'I don't see how you'll get through.'

'The Czechs hold an anti-Semitic riot, and it's we whom they want to arrest,' said Younger disgustedly. They were still inside Oktavian's carriage. 'Is there another train station?'

'Several,' replied Oktavian, 'but the police are sure to be there too. There is another way, Doctor, if you're willing. Aeroplane. A French company began service just last month. The airstrip is small and nearly always deserted. The police may not think of it. The aeroplanes are quite safe, they say, but very dear.'

'What would you think of flying?' Younger asked Colette.

'Luc looked happy to be left behind, didn't he?' she answered. 'Almost as if he were glad to be away from me.'

Vienna's airport – the only one in Austria – consisted of a dirt landing strip with a single craft on it: a double-winged monoplane with the largest propeller on its nose Younger had ever seen. Oktavian was right: there were no policemen. Neither, however, was there anyone else, so far as they could see. No passengers, no ticket agents, no crew. The only building was locked.

Venturing around the back, they found two men drinking coffee and schnapps. One turned out to be the pilot, a Frenchman, who jumped eagerly from his chair when Oktavian inquired about the possibility of two passengers flying immediately to the nearest port.

'We're supposed to fly to Paris,' said the pilot with a Gallic shrug, 'but we're not particular. I could take you to Bremen.'

'Bremen would be fine,' replied Younger.

They agreed to a price. The pilot downed his schnapps and clapped his hands. 'Off we go then,' he said.

The aircraft boasted eight passenger seats. When the pilot had settled into the cockpit, he took an additional swallow from a hip flask and signaled a thumbs-up to his partner, who gave the propeller a strong tug. The engine churned into life. Oktavian, looking less enthusiastic about the plan he had originated, said goodbye to Younger and Colette at the foot of a small ladder leading into the passenger compartment.

'It's strange, Mademoiselle,' said Oktavian. 'All this time I've felt I knew you from somewhere else. A long time ago. You have no relatives in Austria?'

'Perhaps you knew my grandmother,' said Colette. 'She was Viennese.'

'That's it,' cried Oktavian. 'I must have met her. Yes, I can almost remember the event. I knew I had seen your face before. She was of noble birth, your grandmother?'

'Oh, no, she was very poor.'

'I would have sworn it was at some fine ball, and with some fine gentleman.'

'That can't have been my grandmother, Count Oktavian.'

'Well, it will come to me. But you mustn't call me Count. I don't count for anything.'

Taking off, the aircraft rolled alarmingly, but it achieved a semblance of stability on reaching altitude. They peered down at the blanket of snow beneath them – which was not snow, but clouds.

'I've never seen the top of a cloud before,' said Colette. 'Do you think God minds?'

'I doubt He'd begrudge us a view of His handiwork,' answered Younger. 'I'd be more worried about your toying with His atoms.'

'Why do you so mistrust radium?' she asked. 'You made me wear that absurd suit in Professor Boltwood's laboratory. Everyone else thought I looked like a sea diver.'

'Everyone else should have been wearing one too.'

'I wonder if it could explain radioactivity,' mused Colette. 'Dr Freud's death instinct. We don't have any idea why radium atoms split apart – but then we don't know why other atoms don't. Perhaps there is one force holding the particles together, and another one driving them apart. It would be just what Dr Freud described: two fundamental forces, one of attraction and one of repulsion.'

'Which is stronger?' asked Younger.

'I would say the force holding them together,' said Colette. 'That would explain why radioactivity releases so much energy.' A thought came to her: 'But that energy, when it's released – that could be the death force. Perhaps the splitting of the atom is death itself, in pure form. It could communicate the death force to other atoms, causing them to split apart.'

'And you wonder why I don't trust it,' said Younger.

'That could also explain radium's effect on cancer,' replied Colette with growing excitement. 'No one has ever explained how radium cures cancer. Even Madame doesn't know. But Dr Freud was right: cancer cells are cells that have stopped dying. When radium is placed inside a tumor, perhaps it releases the death force, spreading it out over the whole tumor, transmitting it to the cancer cells, which makes them begin dying again. What are you doing?'

As Colette spoke, Younger had become distracted by a separate train of thought until finally he had risen from his seat. 'Pilot,' he called out. 'You said this plane was supposed to fly to Paris?'

'Oui, Monsieur,' said the pilot.

'Take us there.'

'Paris?' asked Colette. 'Why?'

'To see one of your heroes.'

Chapter Seventeen

Under the headline 'Invited to Mexico,' Littlemore read the following front-page story:

An invitation to President-elect Harding to visit Mexico was extended at a conference last night between Senator A. B. Fall of New Mexico, and Elias L. Torres, envoy from President-elect Obregon of Mexico. The invitation contemplated Senator Harding's attendance at the inauguration of President-elect Obregon in Mexico City on the twenty-fifth of this month. Whether the invitation will be accepted seems very uncertain and tonight there was no official statement from the President-elect. Senator Harding is exceedingly anxious to restore amity between Mexico and the United States, but his close advisers doubt the propriety at this time of the President-elect going to foreign soil.

Littlemore was riding a train back down to Washington. He stared out the window for a long time.

On arriving in Washington, Littlemore took a taxi directly to the Library of Congress, just down the street from the United States Capitol. There he asked for some basic facts and history concerning the country of Mexico; the librarian directed him to the World Book of Organized Knowledge. A half-hour later, his pace quickening, Littlemore went to the Senate Office Building.

'What's the matter?' asked Fall when Littlemore was let in to see him.

'I read the Mexico story in the paper, Mr Senator.'

'Now that's something I'm proud of,' said the Senator, stretching his arms and leaning back in his chair. 'The two presidents-elect of the two largest democracies in the world. It'll be a first. Harding doesn't want to go, but I'll persuade him. Obregon will pull his troops out of the mines and let us keep our oil wells, and all will be right with the world.'

'I don't think Mr Harding should go, sir.'

'You're giving me advice on foreign policy?'

'What if it was Mexico, Mr Fall?'

'What if what was Mexico?'

'What if it was Mexico, not Russia?'

There was a long pause. 'You ain't talking about the bombing, are you, son?' asked Fall.

'Remember what you asked me the first time I met you? What country stood to gain from the bombing, what country had the motive, what country would have felt it had the right to attack us?'

'Sure I remember.'

'Nobody had a bigger motive to bomb J. P. Morgan than the Mexicans,' said Littlemore. 'Morgan's been bleeding them dry – keeping every banker in the world from lending to Mexico for six years. That's not the only motive either. From what I hear, they hate us pretty good down there, sir. Been looking to pay us back for a long time.'

'What for?'

'The Mexican-American War.'

'What kind of-? That's ancient history, boy. Nobody even remembers that war.'

'They remember it, sir. We took almost half their land. Invaded them. Occupied Mexico City. Killed a lot of people. There were some atrocities. I think they think we look down on them, Senator Fall. On top of which they think we're taking all their silver and oil, getting rich while they're dirt poor.'

Fall considered. 'I was going to say that's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard, but maybe it ain't. This new envoy Torres – I'll tell you the truth, he didn't rub me the right way. Like he was hiding something.'

'Let's say they were getting ready to nationalize our oil wells,' Littlemore went on. 'They'd have to show us that even though our army can lick theirs, they can hurt us in a different way – a new way – that an army can't stop. Hurt us badly enough so it wouldn't be worthwhile to invade.'

'You're saying the bombing was supposed to show us how they'd fight if we invaded?'

'I'm saying that if you look at it from Mexico's point of view, it starts to make sense. An attack on Morgan. Revenge for our invasion. And a warning of what kind of damage they can inflict on us if we move in with our army after they take back the oil. All three at once.'

'In that case they'd have to be first-class idiots,' said Fall, 'because they forgot to tell us they were the ones who did it.'

'They wouldn't want to say it right out,' answered Littlemore. 'Then we'd have to send the army in, which is what they don't want. So they'd leave us a sign showing they did it, without giving us any proof.'

'But they didn't leave a sign.'

'They did,' said Littlemore. 'Do you know when Mexican Independence Day is?'

'No.'

'September sixteenth.'

Fall was silent for several seconds. 'You sure about that? Not the fifteenth, not the seventeenth?'

'September sixteenth, Mr Senator. And it's a big day for them, just like it is for us.'

'Well, I don't use the word irony much, but ain't that an irony? They were trying to show us they ain't so puny, but they're so puny we didn't even get the message.' 'Something else, Mr Fall. Two weeks before the bombing, Mr Lamont of the Morgan Bank was threatened. Lamont got it mixed up though. He thought a banker named Speyer was the one making the threat, but it wasn't Speyer. It was a Mexican consul – a guy named Pesqueira – who said that if Morgan didn't start letting money back into Mexico, there would be hell to pay.'

A thought came to Fall's eyes: 'Why, this envoy Torres, he may have been playing me for a fool. I believe I was a fool. They blow us to pieces, and I get the President of the United States to make peace with them – after they've seized our mines. Maybe they are planning to go for the oil next. Damn my eyes for a blind man.'

'We don't have any proof, Mr Fall. Not yet. And the missing link is still the gold.'

'That's right – what about the gold?' Fall's eyes moved back and forth. 'It can't be, Littlemore. You're telling me that by coincidence our gold was being moved on Mexican Independence Day?'

'I don't think it was coincidence, Senator. Like you said, maybe the Mexicans paid off somebody in our government – somebody in a position to arrange when the gold would be moved. I'm going to the Mexican Embassy, Mr Fall. I'm going to talk to this Torres. And Pesqueira.'

'By God, son, if you get to the bottom of this, I'll get you an embassy of your own. Where'd you like to be ambassador?'

'Not my line, Mr Fall.'

'Then how does Chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation sound?'

The Mexican Embassy, a substantial four-story house on I Street, had a damp and insalubrious odor in its foyer. Discoloration streaked its walls.

'You got mold in here, ma'am,' said Littlemore to the receptionist.

'I know,' she replied. 'Everyone says. Can I help you?'

The detective learned that Elias Torres, the new envoy, had not yet presented his credentials at the embassy, but was expected tomorrow.

Senor Pesqueira, however, was upstairs.

Roberto Pesqueira was a small man with well-oiled black hair, fair skin, an ink-thin mustache and small but perfectly white teeth. He showed no signs of unease when Littlemore introduced himself as an agent of the United States Treasury. If anything, he looked as if he might have been expecting the visit.

'I have reason to think you threatened a man in New York City two months ago, Mr Pesqueira,' said Littlemore.

'What man?'

'Thomas Lamont. Two weeks before the Wall Street bombing.'

Neatly folded white handkerchiefs were piled on one corner of Pesqueira's desk. He removed one of these and applied it to his teeth. 'Your emperor,' said Pesqueira.

'I beg your pardon?'

'Senor Lamont is the king on your throne. Everyone else is his lackey. Wilson, your so-called President, is his lackey.'

'You don't deny the threat?'

'The Morgan Bank strangled my people for six years,' said Pesqueira. 'Your government propped up a corrupt dictator in my country for twenty years. You occupy my country. You steal California from us. You warn us you will make another war if we do not change our constitutional laws. And you accuse me of threatening?'

'I'm just doing my job, Mr Pesqueira.'

'Really? You must have forgotten the first two words of the law of nations.'

'What would those be?'

'Diplomatic immunity. Your law doesn't apply to me. You cannot arrest me. You cannot search my home. You cannot even question me.'

'Nope. You're a consular agent, just like Juan Burns was,' said Littlemore, referring to a Mexican consul jailed in New York City for illegal weapons purchases in 1917. 'You don't have diplomatic immunity.'

'Forgive me, you are not as ignorant as I assumed; one gets so used to it with Americans. But I am not a consular agent anymore. My office is here now, as you can see, in the embassy – and all embassy officials, I'm sure you know, enjoy the immunity of the diplomat. Technically, you are on Mexican soil right now. You cannot even be here without my consent. Shall I call the police, Agent Littlemore?'

Littlemore hurried back to Senator Fall's chambers and, notwithstanding the protest of one of the Senator's assistants, knocked on Fall's door and strode through.

'Don't you come busting in here, boy,' said Fall, seated at his desk, white handlebar mustache contrasting sharply with a florid countenance.

'Sorry, Mr Senator,' said Littlemore. 'I need to know where I can find the Mexican envoy you were telling me about – Torres. Right away.'

'Why?'

'He's not on staff at the embassy yet. Can't claim diplomatic immunity. Can we find out where he's staying?'

'That's the sort of thing I'm good at,' said Fall. 'Go sit yourself down in my waiting room. Could take a little while.'

Littlemore went to the Senator's waiting room, but he didn't sit. He paced. He looked at his watch. He got a cup of coffee. Finally, over two hours later, the businesslike but exceedingly good-looking Mrs Cross emerged with an address and a car key. 'Mr Torres has taken an apartment on Crescent Place,' she said. 'Senator Fall says you can use one of his motorcars, if you like. I'll show you where it is.'

In the basement of the Senate Office Building, an electric monorail shuttled people through an underground passage to and from the Capitol. Mrs Cross led Littlemore to a parking garage, where she climbed into the driver's seat of an open-roofed sedan.

'Excuse me, ma'am,' said Littlemore. 'I think I better do this on my own.'

'Because it might be dangerous?'

'That's right.'

'I like dangerous,' she answered. 'Besides, you're in a hurry; do you have any idea where Crescent Place is?'

'No.'

'Then you're wasting time. Get in.'

Mrs Cross slowed as they approached a narrow lane in a fashionable neighborhood. They were on Sixteenth Street. In their rearview mirror, the gates of the White House were visible in the distance far behind them. Mrs Cross turned into the curving lane and parked in front of a small apartment house. Dusk had begun to fall.

Littlemore found the name, 'Elias Torres,' handwritten in relatively fresh ink next to the mail slot for apartment 3B. Climbing to the third floor, Littlemore rang the bell. Mrs Cross stood behind him.

'Who it is?' called a Spanish-accented voice from within.

'Federal agent James Littlemore,' said Littlemore. 'Is that Elias Torres?'

'Jace.'

'What did you say?'

'I am Elias Torres.'

'I want to ask you a few questions, Mr Torres.'

'What about?'

'About the bombing of Wall Street,' answered Littlemore.

There was a pause. 'All right. A minute. I am putting on the shirt.'

'I'll give you thirty seconds,' said the detective. Littlemore put his ear to the door. He heard rushed footsteps and a window being thrown open.

'He's running,' said Mrs Cross.

'I know,' replied Littlemore.

'Aren't you going to do anything?' she asked.

'Yup – wait to make sure he's on his way.' Littlemore banged on the door. When no response was forthcoming, the detective took out a pick and metal file and went to work on the lock. 'We don't want Torres, Mrs Cross.'

'Why not?'

'He just arrived from Mexico,' said Littlemore, working his file between doorjamb and bolt. 'Hasn't moved into his embassy office yet. No diplomatic immunity. We can search whatever boxes and government papers the guy brought with him: that's what we want. But without a warrant, you can't just break into somebody's place and search his stuff – unless of course your suspect is attempting to flee.'

Littlemore popped the bolt.

'You play by the rules, New York,' said Mrs Cross.

'Somebody has to.' A breeze was blowing the curtains of the living- room window. Littlemore looked out: the window opened onto a fire escape. 'That's where he went.'

The apartment was newly and cheaply furnished. The only decorations were a few wall-hung watercolors of clowns and bulls, along with a vase of flowers sitting on an inexpensive table. Littlemore went through the rooms, the closets, the drawers. He found nothing – only a smattering of clothes and personal effects. Mrs Cross stood in the living room, smoking a cigarette. 'Sharp move,' she said, 'letting him run.'

'Not looking too smart, am I?' asked Littlemore.

'Tidy Mexican gentleman,' said Mrs Cross, making use of a clean ashtray on the dining table. 'He might have swept his floor a little better.'

Littlemore followed her line of sight. At the base of the wall, a small mound of sawdust was visible. Five feet above this sawdust, hanging on the wall, was a watercolor of a bullfight.

'Got him,' said Littlemore.

He lifted the picture off its hanger. A hole had been drilled behind it – a hole large enough for a man to stick his hand into. Which is what Littlemore did, drawing out therefrom a cardboard cylinder. The corners of rolled-up documents poked out from either end of the tube. Littlemore pulled the sheets free and flattened them out on the table, holding them down so they didn't curl.

Some of the documents were photographs. Another was a letter, in

Spanish, bearing the stamp and letterhead of a Mexican governmental department. One was a diagram.

'Holy cow,' said Littlemore. 'Holy mother of cow.'

'Why are we going down the fire escape?' asked Mrs Cross, descending the metal stairs a few treads behind Littlemore.

'Because if anybody's waiting for us, they'll be out front.'

'Who would be waiting for us?'

'If I'm Elias Torres and I left these documents behind, I'm coming back for them. With some friends. And some guns. Hold this.'

Handing Mrs Cross the cardboard cylinder with the documents inside it, Littlemore let himself down a short metal ladder, at the end of which he had to jump the last several feet to the ground. He was in the building's rear lot, which appeared to be empty.

'Throw me the tube,' he said quietly, 'and come down.'

She complied, but when she reached the last rung of the ladder, still some six feet off the ground, she looked at him and said, 'Now what?'

'Let go,' he answered. 'I'll catch you.'

She hesitated.

'Jump, for Christ's sake,' he whispered.

She did; he caught her. She had one hand on his chest: 'You're stronger than you look.'

'Is that a compliment?' he asked. 'Don't answer. Just keep quiet.'

He led Mrs Cross around the apartment house, keeping her behind him, pressing himself against the wall when they came to the street. Peering around the corner, Littlemore saw four men, hats pulled low over their heads, outside the front door of the building. One sat on the hood of the sedan in which Mrs Cross and he had arrived; the man seemed to be carelessly polishing his shoe. Littlemore drew his gun.

'Wait,' whispered Mrs Cross. 'I'll go. They don't know you're with a woman. I'll pick you up on Avenue of the President.'

'Where's that?'

'It's Sixteenth Street.' She pointed the way. Then she walked boldly out into the street, displaying not a hint of anxiety. As she sauntered near the car, the men elbowed each other. One whistled; another asked her questions of a personal nature, which Mrs Cross did not answer. When she let herself into the car and started the engine, the man sitting on the hood leaned over the windshield.

'Where do you think you're going, honey?' he said. Perhaps he thought she couldn't pull out with a man on her hood. If so, he was mistaken.

'If you can hang on, you'll find out,' answered Mrs Cross. She put the car into drive and shot from the curb, dumping the man onto the pavement behind her. Without turning to look, she gave the four men a wave of her hand and turned at the first corner. Littlemore, in the meantime, had taken advantage of the distraction to walk off, unnoticed, in the other direction.

Mrs Cross and Littlemore, coming from opposite directions, met on Sixteenth Street, renamed Avenue of the President by its socially ambitious residents. Littlemore glanced over his shoulder before climbing in the car: no one was following them.

'Where to?' she asked.

'Your senator – where would he be right now?'

'Mr Fall? Home – at the Wardman Park Hotel. It's not far from here.'

'Go,' said Littlemore. He checked behind them again. 'Not bad, Mrs Cross.'

'Why did you ask my first name if you aren't going to use it?' she replied.

The central lobby of the thousand-room Wardman Park on Connecticut Avenue, which sprawled out in several wings on a bucolic sixteen-acre hill, was bright and crowded with brand-new automobiles as well as a throng of onlookers ogling them despite the lateness of the hour.

'An auto show,' said Littlemore disparagingly. 'The whole world's foul, and all these people can think about is a new car.'

'Why Agent Littlemore,' said Mrs Cross, 'this is a new and darker tone for you. I thought you looked at things on the bright side.' 'They got a hundred elevators in this place. Which way?' 'Follow me.'

On the eighth floor, Senator Fall himself opened the door to his rooms, dressed in a dark red smoking jacket. Mrs Cross walked right in, making herself at home. Littlemore stood in the doorway 'You found something?' asked Fall.

Littlemore nodded.

'Have you shown it to Houston?'

'I can't,' said Littlemore.

As Littlemore spread out the documents on Senator Fall's dining table, Mrs Cross placed two tumblers of whiskey over ice in front of the men. She poured another for herself. 'What are the photographs of?' she asked.

'Looks like a military training camp somewhere in Mexico,' said Littlemore. 'That's a shooting range there. These are machine rifles. This one shows people working with fuses and detonators.' 'What's this list of names?' asked Fall.

'I'd say those are people who spent time at the camp. See, it shows how long they spent, what dates, and what weapons training they got. They're from all over the world. They got Italians, Russians – you name it.'

'It's a goddamn terrorist boot camp,' said Fall, 'right under our noses.' 'Do you see these two names, sir?' asked Littlemore. 'Sacco and Vanzetti,' said Fall.

'Looks like Flynn was onto something after all,' said Littlemore. Then he placed a different, thicker sheet of paper on top of the others. This one had a pen-and-ink sketch on it, carefully drawn, with arrows and labels in Spanish.

'My God,' said Fall.

'What is it?' asked Mrs Cross, sipping her whiskey.

'A diagram for arranging shrapnel around a bomb loaded in a wagon – a horse-drawn wagon.'

No one spoke.

'And that's not even the kicker, Senator Fall. Look at this one.'

Littlemore pointed to a document bearing the letterhead of the Controller-General of Mexico and, at the bottom, that gentleman's signature. Between these two formalities were several paragraphs of flowery Spanish. Senator Fall read them.

'You understand what this letter says, son?'

'Yes, sir. It's an authorization to transfer $1,115,000 to the accounts of three United States senators and one United States Cabinet member.'

'Are you one of the three, Senator dear?' Mrs Cross asked innocently.

Fall swatted Mrs Cross on her flank. 'No, I ain't. It's Borah, Cotton Tom Heflin, and Norris – the three biggest friends in Congress of those bandits running Mexico.'

'Senator Borah – the one having an affair with Alice Roosevelt?'

'Is that the only thing you women think about?' asked Fall.

'It might explain why Mr Borah needed extra money,' replied Mrs Cross. 'Which Cabinet member was getting rich?'

'Mr Houston, of the Treasury,' answered Littlemore.

Toward midnight, important men began arriving at Senator Fall's apartment at the Wardman Park Hotel. Retiring to a private study, they engaged in discussions from which Littlemore was excluded, although the detective was asked in several times to repeat the circumstances in which he'd found the documents. The meeting went on for hours. To judge from the sharp and raised voices, the discussion was contentious – occasionally acrimonious. At one point, Littlemore heard Senator Fall arguing that President Taft had 'done no less' for Wilson in 1912.

Mrs Cross identified some of the men to Littlemore: Mr Colby,

the Secretary of State; Mr Baker, Secretary of War; Mr Daniels, Secretary of the Navy; Mr McAdoo, whom Littlemore had met with Commissioner Enright and the Mayor; and Mr Daugherty, the man expected to be Harding's Attorney General. 'Senator Harding himself would be here,' she said, 'but he's vacationing, lucky man. Not that he would have made any decisions anyway. These are the men who make the decisions.'

'So this McAdoo – he's the President's son-in-law? He must be as old as Wilson himself.'

'Girls like older men in this town,' replied Mrs Cross. 'Eleanor must have been about twenty when she became engaged to him. He was over fifty. But a very handsome over-fifty. You don't approve of a girl taking an interest in older men?'

'Wonder how the President felt about it,' said Littlemore, thinking of his own daughters.

'They say it broke his heart. Mr McAdoo was a member of Mr Wilson's Cabinet at the time. But Mr Wilson let him go and then, last June, took the Democratic nomination away from him. I believe Mr McAdoo might have been our next president otherwise. Poor Eleanor. I wonder how she feels now.'

'Wilson fired his own daughter's husband from the Cabinet?'

'Oh, Mr McAdoo came out all right. He's a very prominent lawyer. He's here because he knows the location of the biggest oil wells in Mexico, which belong to one of his clients. I believe Mr Brighton is an acquaintance of yours? You rode his train to New York. It's quite nice, isn't it?'

'How does everybody know what I'm doing?' asked Littlemore.

'Were there any girls on Mr Brighton's train?'

'No, there weren't.'

'Too bad. There were the one time I was invited. Well, I'm taking a rest.' It was past two in the morning. At the foot of the stairs, she turned: 'Would you mind coming upstairs, Agent Littlemore? I need to ask you something.'

Senator Fall's apartment had two floors. Evidently the bedrooms were upstairs. Littlemore went to the stairwell. The motion of Mrs Cross's figure ascending a flight of steps was even harder to turn away from than it was on flat ground. He followed her and found her in a guest bedroom, unfastening her earrings. 'Close the door,' she said.

'Why?' asked Littlemore.

'I told you – I need to ask you something.'

He closed the door. She undid her blond hair and shook it out. 'What's your question, Mrs Cross?' he asked.

She approached very near him. With her heels, she was almost exactly his height. 'Does Mrs Littlemore know how important her husband's going to be?'

'Does Mr Cross know how his wife spends her nights?'

'There is no Mr Cross anymore. He died in the war.'

'I'm sorry about that, Grace, and I'm flattered, I really am, but I can't. There are rules about this kind of thing.'

'Rules?' She slipped off her shoes, one at a time, and looked up at him, putting her hands on his chest. 'This is Washington, Agent Littlemore. The rules don't apply here.'

'Maybe not,' he said, removing her hands. 'But I still play by them.'

At five-thirty in the morning, the meeting broke up, and the well- dressed gentlemen took their leave. There was little talk, and much seriousness of expression, as the long dark overcoats made their way out of Senator Fall's apartment.

'I'm too old for this,' said Fall to Littlemore after all had departed, pouring himself another drink and easing himself into a chair. 'The war order will go out tomorrow. It'll take a while to get the troops to the border. I told them we'll need half a million soldiers.'

'A half million?' repeated Littlemore.

'Baker thinks we can do it with a fifth as many, because he's not thinking about what we're going to be doing after we win. We're going to have a country to run, for Christ's sake.' Fall took a drink, grimaced. 'Where's Grace? I need milk. Wilson's people don't want to make it public yet that Mexico bombed Wall Street. That's what I was fighting with them about. They're afraid the people will panic if they realize that the enemy can blow the hell out of our cities. I told them the American people aren't a bunch of sissies. They'll demand war when they find out. Anyway, for now Baker's not going to say anything about the bombing. They're going to play it in the papers as a response to Obregon grabbing our mines.'

'What are they going to do about Mr Houston and the three senators?'

'Nothing yet.'

'I thought they wouldn't. All we've got is an authorization from the Mexicans to transfer funds. It's not proof any money ever changed hands. It's not proof of any crime at all. We need more.'

'You've done your country a great service, son.'

'Thank you, Mr Senator,' said Littlemore.

The sun was rising when Littlemore left. The November air was sharp and clean; the smell of burning leaves was everywhere. Littlemore walked the two miles back to his hotel. When he got there, he showered, trying to figure out how he would behave around Secretary Houston and what he'd need to do at the Treasury. He stayed under the steaming water a long time.

Chapter Eighteen

I think you must like keeping me in the dark,' Colette said to Younger in their lurching airplane, shouting to make herself heard over the propeller's roar.

Younger had refused to give Colette any explanation of his changing their destination from Bremen to Paris except to say that he had questions only Marie Curie might be able to answer. Far below he could see the twisting Danube, whose course the pilot was evidently following. 'Yes, it must be frustrating,' he replied to Colette, 'when you've been such a model of transparency yourself.'

When they finally reached Paris, they passed so close to Mr Eiffel's tower they seemed almost about to graze it. At the airstrip a few other planes warmed themselves in the afternoon sun, haphazardly arranged, and there was even a ticket office, but the entire place was deserted. The pilot, himself a Parisian, eventually gave them a lift to the city center in a ramshackle car.

Colette pointed out favorite sights as they crossed the bridge to the Trocadero and its spectacular crab-shaped Oriental palace, where, around calm reflecting pools, top-hatted men and parasol-carrying women promenaded. She gave the pilot directions to the Radium Institute. 'You must remember,' she said to Younger, 'that Madame is not in the best health anymore, and her sight is failing.' Colette shook her head. 'They almost rumored her to death a few years ago. Now she is the toast of Paris, and they all try to pretend it never happened.'

Viewed from the Rue Pierre Curie, the Radium Institute looked more like a comfortable bourgeois house than a scientific laboratory. 'When I first went through these doors and saw Madame s equipment inside,' said Colette, 'I thought it must be the grandest, finest laboratory in the world. Then I saw your marble halls of science in America. It must seem like nothing to you.'

Inside the equipment was indeed of very high quality: banks of electrometers, gas burners, twisted-necked glass beakers, all sparkling with scrupulously maintained sterility. Colette, after greeting old friends, eventually led Younger to the doorway of a room with a high ceiling, a large window, and a desk rather than a laboratory table. A gray-haired woman stood inside this room, instructing an assistant who was carefully packing equipment into a box.

Colette knocked on the open door and said, 'Madame?'

Marie Curie turned and stared: 'Who is it?'

'It's Colette, Madame,' said Colette.

'My child,' cried Madame Curie, beaming with delight. 'Come here. Come here at once.'

Marie Curie, fifty-two, looked older. Her upper lip was pinched with little vertical lines, her hands were spotted, her fingertips red. She wore her gray hair in a tight bun. A simple black dress covered her entirely, from tight collar to long sleeves to floor-length skirt. Her posture, however, was straight and proud, and she had one of those brows so clear, so fine, that it conveys a serenity beyond the slings and arrows of human misfortune.

'These dreadful cataracts,' Madame Curie went on. 'My surgery is next month. The doctors promise me a complete recovery. Let me look at you close up – why, you're lovelier than ever.'

Colette introduced Younger and explained to Madame Curie that he wished to ask her a few questions, if she could spare the time.

'Dr Stratham Younger,' said Madame Curie, shaking his hand. 'I know that name. Were you one of the soldiers who took training with us last year?'

'No, Madame, but I treated many with your X-ray units in France. America owes you an unrepayable debt.'

'I remember now,' she said. 'You were the one who initiated the entire program. I saw your name in the correspondence. I can't thank you enough. Your army kept us afloat last year when we had no other funding.'

Colette looked at Younger in surprise.

'The benefit was ours,' replied Younger. 'Your mobile radiological apparatus is far superior to anything we have. Which I only knew because Miss Rousseau was kind enough to volunteer her services to our men.'

'You never told me you worked with Americans,' Madame Curie said to Colette. 'We all have our secrets, don't we? Let me make some tea. How do you find America, my child?'

'Anything is possible there,' answered Colette. 'For good or bad – that's how one feels. You should see their radium refinery. Black smoke pours from the chimneys. Trucks roll up one after the other, depositing ore brought by train from mines in Colorado, two thousand miles away. The factory runs day and night – using your isolation process, Madame. They work with an ore called carnotite, not pitchblende. They say there is enough carnotite in America to make nine hundred grams of radium.'

Madame Curie went still for a long moment. 'Nine hundred grams,' she said at last. 'What I might do with ten. Forgive me. I'm not bitter. But you know that Pierre and I could have patented our discoveries long ago, when no one on earth had ever heard of radium or dreamt of radioactivity. Everyone told us to take out patents on our isolation processes, but we refused. That's not what science is for. Radium belongs to all mankind. Still, had we behaved a little more selfishly, I would not be without radium today, and with just a little radium we could do such things – cure so many – save the infant who might have grown up to be the next Newton. I have none left at all now. Only radon vapor. We have so many experiments waiting to be performed. Patients by the dozen whom we turn away.'

No one spoke.

'And how is the irrepressible Mrs Meloney?' Madame Curie asked Colette, resuming her energetic and cheerful tone. 'She is certainly one of your anything-is-possible Americans. Is there any chance she'll raise enough money to buy a gram of radium for us?'

'I'm afraid the fund is still short, Madame,' said Colette sadly. 'Very short.'

'Well, I never believed it would happen,' replied Madame Curie. 'She has a good heart, Mrs Meloney, but she is not very scientific in her thinking. Don't worry. If there is no American gram of radium for us, I won't be unhappy. I won't have to travel across the ocean and make a lot of speeches. You know how I hate that sort of thing. I'm much too tired for it. But what can I do for you, Dr Younger?'

'I had hoped,' said Younger, 'with your permission, Madame, that I might make a drawing for you. I took some radiographs of a young woman's neck not long ago. The X-rays made a pattern I had never seen before. I can draw it, though, and I was hoping you might be able to tell me if it means anything to you.'

'Madame is not a roentgenologist, Stratham,' Colette chided him. 'She works with radium, not X-rays.'

'It's quite all right,' replied Madame Curie. 'Let him make us his drawing. I'm curious.'

Younger was given pen and paper; he proceeded to draw. He filled a page with the strange, undulating, cross-hatched shadow pattern that he had seen after X-raying the McDonald girl. When he had finished, Madame Curie held the sheet of paper close to her eyes, then far away, then close again. 'The X-rays,' she said, 'didn't pass through the woman's neck.'

'Exactly,' replied Younger. 'Something blocked them.'

'Or rather interfered with them,' replied Madame Curie. 'You're sure what you saw were X-rays of a person – not an object of some kind?'

'I took them myself. The young woman had a growth on her neck and jaw. Granular. Larger than any such growth I'd ever seen.'

'I know this pattern. Quite well.'

'It's radium, isn't it?' asked Younger.

'Radium?' repeated Colette.

'Without question,' said Madame Curie.

'But how-?' asked Colette.

'Radium is roentgenopaque – impervious to X-rays,' explained Madame Curie. 'What's more, the gamma rays emitted by radium atoms have physical properties virtually identical to X-rays. As a result, the two sets of waves interfere with one another. When an object containing radium is X-rayed, what we see is an interference pattern – this pattern.'

'What would happen,' asked Younger, 'to a person who had radium inside her body for an extended period of time?'

Madame Curie set the drawing down. 'You must understand one thing about radium,' she said, 'how little we comprehend it. Nature kept it hidden for so very long. Within the atoms of radium, there is a cauldron of forces we can't see, a source of almost immeasurable power. Somehow the release of these atomic forces has profound effects on living things. On inanimate lead, radioactivity has hardly any impact at all. On a piece of lifeless paper, the same. But on the living, the effect is profound, unpredictable. Administered properly, it holds unprecedented medical potential. I myself discovered the radium treatment for cancer; in France, when we insert a needle of radium into a cancerous tumor, it is referred to as Curietherapy.'

'In America too, Madame,' said Colette.

'Some think that radioactivity may be the long-sought fountain of youth,' Madame Curie went on. 'Unquestionably it has curative power. But radium is also one of the most dangerous elements on earth. Its radiation seems to interact in some unknown fashion with the molecular structure of life itself. It is a fearsome poison. If a person were to ingest it in any quantity, the case would be hopeless. There is absolutely no means of destroying the substance once it enters the human body.'

Outside the Radium Institute, Colette said, 'But how could Miss McDonald have radium inside her?'

'On September sixteenth,' answered Younger, 'where were you before you met Littlemore and me – before we all went down to Wall Street?'

'I had just visited the radium clinic,' said Colette, 'at the Post-Graduate Hospital.'

'Where they use Curietherapy,' he said. 'You were telling Littlemore and me about it that morning. I knew the McDonald girl didn't have syphilis.'

'What are you saying?'

'She has cancer. A cancer of the neck or jaw.'

'Wait – you think she was a patient at the radium clinic?'

'Let's say Miss McDonald had cancer. If her doctors knew what they were doing, they would have sent her to the Post-Graduate Hospital for treatment; it's the best radium clinic in the city. But something might have gone wrong there. Maybe they botched the treatment and couldn't find the needle of radium they put inside her. Didn't I read about the Post-Graduate Hospital losing ten thousand dollars' worth of radium not long ago? Maybe they lost it inside that girl's neck. After a few weeks, she'd be in agony. She goes back to the clinic and begs them for help. They deny any wrongdoing; they refuse to admit their mistake. Suddenly she sees you. Somehow she gets it into her head that you can help her. She decides to follow you.'

'How could I help her?'

'I don't know, but what other explanation is there?'

A thought occurred to Colette: 'But Amelia left us the note at our hotel the night before – for the kidnapping ring, according to you. You're saying Miss McDonald had no connection to Amelia?'

'I don't know. But someone has to remove the radium from Miss McDonald's neck. God knows what it will do to her. I'll wire Littlemore.'

They found an international cable office in the Place de la Concorde. Younger dashed off a telegram to Littlemore:

MCDONALD GIRL HAS NEEDLE OF RADIUM IN NECK STOP CHECK

WITH POST-GRADUATE HOSPITAL ON TWENTIETH STREET TO SEE

IF SHE WAS PATIENT THERE STOP THEY MAY KNOW WHERE IN

NECK RADIUM IS STOP RADIUM MUST BE REMOVED AT ONCE

REPEAT AT ONCE

'The radiation will burn her throat away,' said Younger as they waited on line for the telegraph operator. 'It could have reached her brain by now. That's probably why she can't regain consciousness.'

'There's no evidence that radium has any effect on the brain,' objected Colette. 'You always overstate radium's danger. Madame is exposed to more radiation than anyone, and she doesn't wear one of your diver's suits.'

'Madame Curie didn't seem particularly healthy to me. She's pale as a lamb. Fatigued. You told me her blood pressure is low.'

'She's a scientist. She stays inside all day.'

'Or else she's anemic,' said Younger. 'She probably has radiation in her bloodstream after all these years.'

'Next you'll say radium caused her cataracts.'

'How do you know it didn't?'

Younger sent the cable. Outside the office, Colette saw a hotel on the other side of the Place de la Concorde. 'Can we get rooms there?' she asked.

'The Crillon?' said Younger, flinching inwardly. 'Why not?'

At Marie Curie's invitation, they attended a crowded dinner party that evening: a celebration of Poland's newfound independence and miraculous victory against the Bolsheviks. The celebration was held in a small apartment – Younger never found out whom it belonged to – where the guests ate standing up. Toasts were raised, a great deal of

Polish was spoken, and an even greater quantity of flavored vodka was drunk.

Madame Curie took Colette under her wing the entire evening as if the girl were her daughter. Colette was still wearing the stylish dress, with its low-cut back, that she'd worn in Prague. It was true that she had nothing else to wear, but Younger nevertheless considered the dress too revealing. Plumed and pomaded Polish men flocked continuously around Madame Curie, doubtless moved by the opportunity to converse with one of the world's greatest scientists. The men bowed deeply when introduced to Colette; they twisted the ends of their moustaches; they kissed her hand. Invariably Colette averted her eyes, flashing a glance at Younger as if she knew he would be watching, which he was.

After midnight, Younger lay on his four-poster bed in the Hotel de Crillon, smoking. His jacket he had flung to the floor, but otherwise he was fully clothed. Even his shoes were on.

He had shown Colette to her room. She was skittish in the hallway, nervous, unable to work the key. He thought the strong drink might have gone to her head, except that he was pretty sure she had only sipped at it. When at last he had taken the key from her and opened the door, she practically fled into the room, leaving Younger in the corridor, with the door ajar. He closed it for her and went to his own room.

Younger stared at the gilt ceiling and at the dancing particles of smoke illuminated by the lamplight. Then he got up, extinguished his cigarette, and returned to the hallway.

He unlocked Colette's door. Her sitting room was empty. He walked past the stiff and formal Empire furniture. At the threshold of the bedroom, he saw the door to her bath cracked open. Through it, he caught glimpses of her moving back and forth, wrapped in two white towels – one for her hair, one for her torso. Apparently she hadn't heard him; she had been in the bath.

She opened the bathroom door, saw him, and froze. Her long neck was bare, her shoulders bare, her slender arms and legs bare, her skin wet.

He walked toward her. She backed away, into the bathroom, against a wall, shoulders lifted in apprehension. There was nowhere to go. The air was thick with moisture from the hot water, the mirror blurred by condensation. He took her by the arms. She struggled; he had to use more force than he expected, but he was prepared to, and he did. Their kiss went on a long time. When it was done, her body had softened, her eyes had closed, and the towel about her hair had fallen to the floor. He picked her up, carried her to the bed, and laid her down on the crisp sheets.

Colette's hair spread out darkly over the pillows. Moonlight from the window silvered her limbs, still gleaming with moisture. One of her hands lay on her chest, the other over her waist, holding the white bath towel in place. He kissed her neck. He heard her murmur, 'Please.' He heard, 'No.'

Younger said, 'Do you want me to stop?'

She answered in a whisper: 'I don't want you to ask.'

He ran his hand through her long hair. He tilted her chin and kissed her mouth. Later she called out to God, biting her lip to keep her voice down, so many times he lost count.

Still later, as they lay next to one another in the moonlight, her cheek resting on his chest, she said, 'Do you forget?'

'Forget what?'

'This. Does it fade away?'

Her head rose and fell with his breath.

'I remembered this before it happened,' he said. 'I saw it before.'

'Me too,' said Colette, smiling. 'Many times.'

She found Younger downstairs the next morning, eating breakfast at a white-linen table in a grand salon with rococo columns and a floor of checkerboard black and white marble. Daintily robed cherubs cavorted on the ceiling. Colette looked simultaneously happy and alarmed.

'Have you seen the policemen?' she asked quietly. 'They're everywhere.'

'Nothing to worry about,' replied Younger. 'Just another American male wanted for murder. Movie star, I'm told. His wife, also a movie star, was found dead on their bed on top of a hundred fur stoles, naked. It was their honeymoon. Something to eat?'

'Madame took me aside last night before we left,' said Colette, troubled, as she sat down across from him. 'I've never seen her that way. She never shows anyone her feelings.'

'What happened?'

'She burst into tears. She said that Monsieur Langevin doesn't love her anymore because she's old. That she gave up her name for him. That she let the whole world condemn her. All she wants now is her science, her experiments. But without radium, she says, she's nothing. She told me she's ready to die.'

A waiter whisked into view, set a place for Colette, and with a flourish unfolded a linen napkin for her. She barely noticed. Then she saw the piece of paper next to Younger's plate.

'You received a wire?' she asked. 'Is it from Dr Freud?'

'No. Littlemore. I went back to the cable office this morning to see if he'd replied.' Younger showed her the cable:

where heck have you been stop you have court date

november twenty second stop two pm stop you

better be here

'Court date?' asked Colette. 'What for?'

'For assaulting Drobac.'

'Assaulting him?' she protested. 'He kidnapped me. He killed that woman on top of the building.'

'Yes, but he hasn't been convicted yet. In the eyes of the law, he's an innocent man.' 'You mean you could go to jail?'

'Littlemore says it's very unlikely,' he answered.

'What are you going to do?'

'Go back. I have to.'

'Why?' she asked. 'Just stay away until they convict him.'

'Littlemore got me out of prison after they arrested me. If I don't appear in court, it will be bad for him. Very bad. I have to go.'

'I'm coming with you.'

'No,' he said. 'It could still be dangerous for you.'

'How? Even if anyone were looking for me, they couldn't possibly know I came back into the country.'

'Someone was watching you in New Haven. Whoever it was may still be there.'

'I won't go to New Haven.' Colette sat quietly for a long time. At last she said, 'I have to come with you; I'm going to raise the money for Madame's radium. Mrs Meloney told me I could do it. She said I just had to be nicer to one rich man, and we could make up the whole shortfall. Besides, Luc will be with Dr Freud for at least two months. I can't stay here by myself and worry about him.'

That afternoon, they caught a train to Rouen from the Saint-Lazare station. The next day, they went on to Le Havre, where they boarded a ship for New York.

With her hand at his elbow, Colette allowed Younger to lead her on an exploratory tour of their ocean liner. They wandered through a glass-domed rotunda, observed ladies and gentlemen playing belote in the hall of Louis XIV, and took tea in a blue-tiled Moorish saloon. In an empty smoking room, they kissed beneath a gently swaying crystal chandelier. And many levels down, as a hard rain began to fall, causing passengers to scurry indoors, they saw a thousand human beings confined to less opulent and more redolent quarters.

'You're corrupting me,' said Colette as they climbed the stairs back

to the upper deck – the first-class deck. A steward readmitted them into the Louis XIV hall. 'You like it.'

'I feel like Dante,' she said, 'emerging from the inferno, with you as my Virgil.'

'No, you're Beatrice, and you'll rise to heaven while I end up below. But,' he considered, 'I'd pay the price again. I'd pay it every time.' 'What price?'

'Eternal damnation,' he answered, 'for a night in your arms.' 'Only one night?'

That evening, despite a fierce storm outside, the ocean liner erupted with merrymaking, toasts, and the blowing of party whistles. In all the dining rooms and lounges of every class, bands and orchestras played American music while the rain beat on the portholes.

'What's happening?' asked Colette. They were descending the grand red-carpeted stairwell into an Edwardian ballroom. Dancers whirled around the floor.

'The United States has elected a new president,' said Younger. 'Who won?'

'A man named Harding.'

They took a seat at a table in silence.

'What's the matter?' she asked him.

'Nothing.'

'All right,' she said. 'Then ask me to dance.' He did.

Well after midnight, they returned to their luxurious stateroom. 'Only one room for both of us?' she asked him, cheeks flushed. 'Monsieur is very presumptuous. Is my corruption never to end?'

The next morning, in their cabin bed, she was happier than he had ever seen her. Lying on their backs, she made him extend a leg in the air and put hers alongside it. She tried to persuade him that despite the difference in their overall height, her leg was almost as long as his. Certainly it was smoother and more appealing in shape.

In the afternoon, however, as they strolled through the ship's exotic outdoor palm court – open to first-class passengers only – she grew contemplative. 'What does Dr Freud mean,' she asked, 'when he says I may be the cause of Luc's condition?'

'I don't know,' said Younger, telling the truth.

'I always thought I could take care of him.'

'You did take care of him.'

'But what if I did the wrong thing keeping him with me all these years?' she asked. 'What if I wanted him to be different? What if I wanted him to be mute?'

'Why?'

'So that I wouldn't have to be alone.'

'Oh, stop it,' Younger replied. 'Pure self-indulgence.'

'You're the one who said I didn't love him.'

'I never said that,' replied Younger.

'You said it with your eyes,' she answered. 'Because I left Luc behind when I took the train to Braunau. You thought killing Hans Gruber was more important to me than taking care of my own brother.'

Younger didn't answer. He hadn't thought any such thing, but she must have.

'If I had died,' she said, 'you would have raised him, wouldn't you?'

'That's why you wanted me to come to Vienna.'

She tightened her grasp around his arm. 'You would have done it – raised him – wouldn't you?'

'If you had died chasing Heinrich?'

'Yes.'

'No, I would have put him in a home for deaf-mutes. Where he belongs. So that he wouldn't remind me of you. But then he couldn't have reminded me of you because I would have killed myself. Besides, you wouldn't have wanted me to raise him: I'm a pauper. Have I mentioned to you how much I have left?'

'No.'

'I don't have anything left. Our stateroom took the last of it. Fortunately, that comes with meals for two, so we won't starve until we reach America.' He stopped, disengaged himself from her arm, and put his hands in his pockets. 'I'm serious. I'm ashamed of my poverty. I should have told you about it. I'm not penniless. I still have my house in Boston, and I believe Harvard will take me back as a professor. But I seduced you under false pretences. No, I did. The worst cad could not have behaved more basely. All this luxury – first-class cabins, grand ballrooms – you'll never see it again. You'd be perfectly justified to leave me now that you know the actual state of things.'

'What a long speech,' she said, taking his arm again. 'And so foolish. I like you much better poor.'