The Marchand Woman

Chapter 1

When the telephone rang she made a face. She wound a towel around her wet hair and tucked the edges in and picked it up on the fifth ring.

It was Howard, his voice very low — like a phonograph running at the wrong speed. “I’m glad I caught you at home. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Wait for me. Has anybody called you?”

“At this hour of the morning?”

“Leave it off the hook till I get there. I don’t want it coming from someone else.”

“Must you be melodramatic?”

“Yes. Wait for me.”

By the time the doorbell rang she had fitted into skirt and blouse and sandals; she was putting her face on. She had a look through the Judas glass and saw him lighting a cigarette on the doorstep.

He seemed to have faded a bit with age, like a photostatic copy of himself. She was surprised to realize how long it had been since she had seen him face-to-face; it had all been letters and the occasional telephone vitriol. The things they had said to each other—

She opened the door to him; he neither spoke nor entered but simply looked at her, his eyes swollen. It unnerved her. She cried with completely false affection, “Howard, darling, why is it I never see you any more?” But she kept her face blank to put the lie to it.

Howard held up a forestalling finger. She let him in; he turned half around, waiting for her to close the door, holding the cigarette in the manner of an actor preparing to turn toward the audience and deliver a curtain line. But still he didn’t speak.

“Darling, you look simply marvelous.” An awkward lie. “I love the distinguished way your hair’s graying at the sides. It would do credit to an investment banker.”

He seemed caught in dumfounded paralysis. She tried again, needling him with her saucy screw-you grin. “How’s your ass anyway?”

“Carole, please.”

“Well then.” She pointed him with vague weariness toward a chair.

He went to it like an old man, wincing as he sat down. She watched him search the coffee table with childlike baffled concentration. Exasperated — “Good grief!” — she plunged into the kitchen, found him an ashtray in a drawer, dropped it on the table before him so that it rattled. Howard twisted the half-consumed cigarette into it, grinding it out savagely. He looked around the room like a fitful airline passenger anxious to memorize the locations of the fastest exits.

“It’s Robert,” he said.

“Of course it’s Robert. I can’t imagine anything else that would bring you here.”

“Sit down.”

Perversely she drew herself up. “He’s dead.”

“No. He’s not dead as far as I know. Sit down, Carole.”

She was furious. “What’s happened? You’ve done your level best to provoke cardiac arrest and there’s nothing wrong with him? You’ve no right—”

“I didn’t say there was nothing wrong with him. Well actually as far as I know there’s nothing physically wrong with him.” He plucked feebly at his pocket. “I happened to be here.” Found another cigarette. “In Los Angeles I mean. Meetings with the Japanese.” He had to use both hands to light it. “The office reached me at my hotel an hour ago.” He inhaled, choked, coughed, recovered. “It’s an unhappy coincidence, my being here just now. I’d rather have been in Washington — I think this would have been easier long-distance.”

She realized he was groping not for a way to tell her but for a way to avoid telling her. He kept glancing at the telephone as if he expected it to reprieve him. It was so masochistically like him: Never face quick pain if it was possible to choose the long agony of not facing it.

She controlled herself. “What’s happened to him?”

He gave her a reproachful look. It slid away; he brooded at the cigarette and his mouth worked ruefully.

She said, “There is, I have to assume, a crisis involving our son — yet you insist on keeping it back so that I can watch you squirm in your own crisis. You’re as demanding of attention as a child banging its spoon on the table. You’re a bastard, Howard, you really are.”

His mouth lifted, one side of it, in a sour smile. “There’s such an irony in it,” he said. “Hijacked. Terrorists. He’s been kidnaped.”

He sucked at the cigarette and smoke poured from his mouth with each word: “It’s not as if he isn’t used to it, is it. I mean at least he knows the ropes, it’s not the first time he’s been kidnaped.”

“Kidnaped.” She repeated the word stupidly.

His hands fluttered and he dropped the cigarette and went scrounging for it in the carpet. When he found it he said, “Apparently it was some sort of grisly accident. He wasn’t meant to be one of the victims — he just happened to be there, he got swept up in it. No rhyme or reason.”

“He’s been kidnaped by terrorists?”

She watched him stand up; he seemed to loom when he approached her — she wasn’t wearing heels. She saw what he was up to in time; she moved away, she didn’t want his clumsy embrace. She said, “I don’t want comforting, Howard. I want facts. Tell me the punch line.”

“There’s no punch line. They took him yesterday afternoon. Nobody knows anything. Nobody knows where he is or whether he’s dead or alive. One assumes he’s still alive — dead hostages aren’t worth much.”

“Hostage for what?”

“It’s still not clear.”

She wandered around the room. “Shall I make coffee?”

“A drink,” he said, “a drink would be better.”

In the kitchen she drew herself together, helped by the mechanical minutiae: Open the cabinet, take down two glasses, find the Dewar’s, pour, return.

Half aware of her movements she sank into the recliner and its footboard flipped up unbidden under her calves. Howard said, “This must be, what, the third time he’s been kidnaped?” There was waspish accusation in his tone.

“Let’s not get started on that.” She tasted the drink but it wasn’t what she wanted; she put it aside. “Mexico?”

“Mexico? Yes, in Mexico. Well at least they were kidnaped in Mexico. God knows where they are now. They could be anywhere. State has no idea. It’s near the coast and there’s flat country all around where they might have landed a plane. The vehicles were found abandoned ten kilometers from where it happened — that doesn’t mean anything, of course they’d switch vehicles. The authorities are looking for witnesses, of course, but—”

She watched him inhale deeply. He threw his head back and closed his eyes. “I’ll try it from the top. I’m sorry. It was Harrison Gordon they were after. He’s the Ambassador. The kidnapers must have been fairly well organized — at least they seem to have had advance information about his itinerary. He was on a fact-finding tour of the provinces. His party was ambushed at a village junction near the coast of Mexico above the peninsula. The kidnapers took Gordon and everybody in his party, hauled them off in buses. Nobody was killed. Apparently one security guard took a rap on the head. A reporter named Ortega happened to be an eyewitness — he’s a stringer for the L.A. Times.”

“What was Robert doing there?”

“According to Ortega he’d hitched a ride down there to plead for medical assistance for the Yaquis. Robert was talking to Ambassador Gordon when it happened. So he was swept up along with the rest of the party.”

“Why hasn’t it been in the papers?”

“It’ll be in the afternoon editions. Washington and Mexico City wanted to keep it quiet but of course they couldn’t keep Ortega muzzled for very long. They were waiting for the demands.”

“Demands?”

“Ransom. There are always demands, aren’t there? I mean you don’t kidnap a United States Ambassador for a lark.”

She said, “It’s a mistake, isn’t it. A ghastly mistake.”

“We’ll know more in time. I asked Paine to call me here this morning if he learns anything. I hope you don’t mind—”

“Who are they? Don’t they even know who they are?”

“The terrorists? Nobody knows yet.”

She said, “What do we do? Just wait? I don’t know if I can bear that.”

“I don’t know what else to do.” His hands wrenched at each other. “It’s not much good saying I’m sorry. But I hope you know how much I’m hating myself right now. If we hadn’t treated him like a Volleyball between us he might not have run away to Mexico with his Peace Corps nonsense and this might—”

“Don’t be ridiculous. A thing like this is as arbitrary as a tornado. I don’t want to indulge you in a mea culpa right now — I haven’t the strength. Do you want breakfast?”

“No. But go ahead if you’re hungry.”

“I’m not.”

She watched him light his third cigarette. She said, “Shall we just sit here and wait for the phone to ring, then?”

“I don’t know.” She saw the tremor in the hand with which he lifted his glass. He said, “I don’t know what to do or what to say. I’m supposed to be in a meeting at eleven. The Japanese trade delegation.”

“Then go to it.”

“And leave you here alone?”

“I’m going to the studio,” she said, deciding it even as she spoke. “We’re still editing the picture.”

“I wonder if it’s possible to work. To keep one’s mind on anything.”

“I’m not strong enough not to,” she said. “I couldn’t possibly sit here and stare at the walls.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

She looked at her watch. “You’ve still got time to make your meeting.”

“Can I drop you at the studio?”

“No thanks. I may want my car with me.”

“I’m at the Hilton,” he said.

“All right. You can reach me at the studio.”

He made as if to stand, but didn’t. “Carole, this is awkward but let me ask you: Have you got a boy friend?”

“A boy friend? No. I have a few men friends.”

“Someone you can turn to, I mean.”

“Let me worry about it, Howard. Rest assured if I want a shoulder to cry on I won’t choose yours.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said with almost laughable petulance. “But it’s just that if you need anything—”

“I know. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be intolerable. It’s kind of you to offer but I’ll be all right.”

He said vaguely, “I think I’ll ask Paine to fly out today and take my place in these meetings. I’ll go back to Washington tonight. I’d rather be there — maybe I can keep my finger on the pulse of things from there. Mexico’s not my desk, of course, but I know Mark Blaisedell fairly well. Maybe I can build a few fires. I’d hate to think we weren’t doing everything possible to save them.”

“Will you keep me informed?”

“Instantly I know anything.”

She didn’t believe him but there was no point arguing with him.

On the turns down Beverly Glen into the Valley she paid rigid attention to her driving; she was running on her nerve-ends and couldn’t take it for granted. She was in Burbank within twenty minutes, parking in the slot that had her name on it. When she emerged from the air-conditioned car the heat slapped her face and she hurried across the compound. A red light glowed above the door of one of the soundstage hangars.

She was thinking she’d treated Howard shabbily. But when she went inside the studio office block she thought defiantly that he deserved it. By the time she reached the elevator she had pushed him aside in her mind; she was thinking now of Robert, trying to picture his plight, imagining him talking with nervous energy to his fellow hostages. Robert would be analyzing it. Talking in that staccato fashion that was not quite a stammer, his shoulder jerking at random intervals, his mouth grimacing in rictus tics. Spouting facts he’d absorbed from news magazines about terrorist attitudes and hostage behavior — telling the others how to react, what face to present to the captors. She had no doubt the Ambassador was listening to Robert rather than the other way round. Robert was a font of facts if not wisdom, and incapable of passivity.

In the cutting room Mort Kyle stood about, furiously smoking a cigarette-sized cigar, wearing a trim denim outfit and a suntanned scowl; Edith was lapping .35-millimeter frames on the Movieola and talking cheerfully: “The most incredible hat. Anyhow I think it was a hat, because she had it on her head.”

Carole closed the door. In the half darkness Mort searched her face. “What’s wrong, darling?”

She told them. Mort and Edith were shocked. Mort stroked his neat beard and made sounds of sympathy; Edith mouthed some of the right things. Carole cut her off: “Look, dear, I need to work. Busy hands, you know, all that. Now where are we?” She had moved adroitly to evade Mort’s hands; now he put them in his pockets and scowled again. The scowl was his favored expression.

He picked up the extension. “Darling, this is Mort Kyle. We’re in Cutting-room Three. If there are any calls for Carole Marchand, patch them in here, will you?”

Carole said, “It could be for Lundquist.”

Mort relayed it into the phone: “The call may come in under her married name, Lundquist.”

Edith made room above the Movieola’s miniature screen. “We’re trying to shave some frames Off the ski-lift sequence. Right here — we could shorten the long-shot, cut faster to the close-up and tighten up around the dialogue.”

“I hate to lose that shot. Cap broke his ass setting up on the ice to get that angle. It’s a gorgeous composition.”

Mort was on the phone ordering coffee; he turned away from it, cupping the mouthpiece in his hand. “It’d do credit to Archie Stout and John Ford, darling, but we’re not selling a travelogue. We’ve still got to snip a lot of footage.”

Edith cocked a knowing eyebrow and Carole tried to smile to reassure the girl but she was having trouble dimpling up just now; she turned away before it became a snarl. When Mort hung up the phone she said, “Am I going to have to fight you over every foot of this picture?”

“You’re going to have to fight me over about sixty-five hundred frames, darling. That’s what it’s still got to lose.”

The Movieola rattled. Frames jinked across the screen; underlit by that flickering source, Mort’s narrow-bearded face had the Mephistophelean look of a silent movie villain’s.

“It’s my picture,” she said. “This time it’s mine. I wrote it and directed it — I won’t have it butchered by a clock.”

Mort’s eyes glimmered from the gloom. “You don’t have final cut, darling. Neither do I. I only produced it — the distributors make the decisions. They want a picture they can screen at seven o’clock and nine o’clock. Go over a hundred and five minutes and you’re screwing up their timetables. Look — the studio will cut it if we don’t. Isn’t it better that you and I do the dirty deed ourselves?”

The little cigar glowed briefly and arced to the floor; Mort’s heel crushed the life from it. For a long time they stood in conflicting silences.

Mort gave her a soft smile. He wasn’t using his charm deliberately; the charm was there, that was all. “It’s a low-budget picture, darling. I can’t see the exhibs bending over to let us have the extra five minutes, can you?”

“If I were a man would you browbeat me this way?”

“Darling, I’d be far more ruthless with a man. Sam Gilfillan refuses to speak to me to this day because he insists I ruined Pride Goeth in the cutting room. Face it, Carole, if you were a man you wouldn’t have had a shot at directing this picture at all. They’re going out of their way to accommodate women and minorities right now. So let’s not have any sexist crap, shall we?”

“I’m sorry. It was a cheap shot. I’ve never done that before. It’s nerves.”

“I understand, darling. Sure. I also understand you came to work on purpose. You can go home if you want to, but if you stay here we’re going to cut this picture. That’s what we’re all here for. Now find me four and a half minutes to drop. You pick ’em, I’ll stand aside. But I want four and a half. Minimum. Fair enough?”

Mort left the cutting room; Carole settled down with Edith to feed stock through the sprockets. She had no real quarrel with her producer; these were the games that had to be played. She knew her craft. Felix’s Kingdom would have to sell two million tickets before break-even. She didn’t have to remind herself she was a movie director, not an auteur-artiste defined by the sophomoric Cahiers-du-Cinema fools.

It was her fourth picture. Two of the first three had made money; all three had won awards of one kind or another. What Mort had said was not true — she hadn’t got this job because of her sex; he’d only said it to goad her. Mort would say almost anything to provoke debate, it was his manner. What mattered in the end was that she knew he liked the picture. She liked it herself: Her object had been to make a movie that she would have bought a ticket to see if someone else had made it.

Felix’s Kingdom was an unabashed tearjerker. A man, two women. She’d wanted sentiment, romance: a six-handkerchief movie that would make her cry with heartbreak and cry again with relief and triumph, sappy and trite and wonderful. The critics would lambaste it but screw them. It made her cry.

She hadn’t cried for Robert. The realization shook her. Was she so far gone she could be stimulated to tears only by the synthetic?

She couldn’t keep her mind on the job. Finally she gave vague instructions to Edith and went out, not quite sure where she was bound.

Mort wasn’t in his office. She tracked him to the commissary. He gave her his public smile — a creeping revelation of capped teeth: His party manners and she couldn’t tell how he might behave if they’d been alone, unobserved. She hadn’t slept with him but at times she’d been curious what it might have been like: He had all his strengths on the surface and from this she inferred he might be a good lover, but good-in-bed was a phrase that had lost its meaning to her because she was going through a phase — at least she thought of it as a phase — in which she had convinced herself that you had to love with your mind and heart as well as your body. Meaningless sex was a stage she had endured in the early days after the divorce. For a while she had believed she had a stunted capacity for loving. She was no longer sure whether that was the case; she liked to think she was mature enough not to believe romantic nonsense (waiting-for-the-right-man-to-come-along) and lately she had begun to suspect perhaps she simply didn’t like men very much. She had experimented in her mind with lesbian fantasies but had found them unexciting, uninviting. Maybe I am just drying up, she had thought. Galloping menopause. Yet she still made herself beautiful before she went out to face the world each day; and she hadn’t let her looks go. But was it pretense? She didn’t know.

“Sympathy,” Mort said, “is easy to give and embarrassing to receive, but I want you to know that—”

“I know. You don’t need to say it.”

“All the same, darling, if you want a hand to hold.”

She listened abstractedly to the commissary’s rattle of cutlery, the heavy drone of voices. It was such a mundane scene; it made her feel guilt — Robert somewhere in a jungle, perhaps tied hand and foot: perhaps injured, in pain, perhaps in an agony of hunger or thirst. Keeping his upper lip stiff and bucking up the others, not out of any sense of heroics but simply because that was Robert.

She said, “The one thing about you that’s driven me up the wall ever since we first met is that inane Hollywood habit of yours of calling everybody darling.”

“I know. I can’t even remember where I picked it up.” Mort took her elbow and squired her to the cafeteria queue, talking about the picture. Her mind was on Robert and she hardly attended.

When they’d eaten he said abruptly, “Have you ever wanted to get married again?”

“I thought I did once. Briefly thought it. It didn’t work out. Fortunately I’d grown wise enough to look before I jumped in — so I didn’t jump.”

“Cold feet?”

“Yes. Let’s talk about something else, shall we?”

“Tell me about your son. I never met him, you know.”

“Robert,” she said. “Robert the survivor. How he endured the buffeting we gave him I’ll never know. That is the overriding guilt of my life — it’s part of the reason, I suppose, why I’m having such a hard time dealing with this.”

“Nobody could have an easy time with something like this.”

“I used to kidnap him from Howard. Did you know that?”

“No. Must have been a while ago.”

“Fifteen years ago.” She pushed her plate away. “It was one of those asinine custody things. After the divorce I moved out here with Robert and petitioned the court for permanent custody. California court. At the same time Howard was filing petitions in the Virginia courts — we’d been living in Alexandria. Howard still lives there. The upshot was the Virginia courts awarded custody to him and the California courts awarded custody to me. Howard thought I wasn’t a fit mother for him. He was convinced I’d ruin Robert’s life. I hired private detectives — they took him right out of an Alexandria schoolyard and dragged him all the way out here. It happened twice. What a dismal performance it all was — the two of us behaving like animals quarreling over a marrow-bone. I don’t think any of us ever recovered from it. Certainly Robert didn’t.”

“That kind of kidnaping’s not illegal, is it. I mean you can kidnap your own child and it’s not a violation of the law.”

“I’m not talking about that kind of guilt, Mort.”

“Your ex is something to do with the State Department, isn’t he?”

“It’s his career. At the moment he’s deputy Under-secretary on the Australia-New Zealand desk. He’ll be an ambassador one day.”

“How’d you come to marry him?”

“You can’t imagine how often I’ve asked myself that very question.”

“Well?”

“It always comes up lame no matter how I parse it. My brother brought him home one fateful day in nineteen fifty-one. Howard’s very bright, you know, and he came from one of those nearly Main Line families, the Lundquists of whatchamacallit. Oh it’s all so tedious. Those cufflinks you’re.wearing look like golden manhole covers. Do they signify anything?”

“They’re five-dollar gold pieces, vintage eighteen eighty. A gift from somebody I used to know. Go on — tell me about you and Howard.”

She slumped with memory. “I had a fantastic pathetic terrible crush on him. I was in school — you know. In my freshman pleated skirt and saddle shoes. But I was never one of those apple-pie country girls. There was a little group of us. We were determined to be as sophisticated as Noel Coward and as witty as Dorothy Parker. My dorm came to be known as Villa Cirrhosis and our little crowd was known all over campus as The Vicious Circle. You know how it is. Kids.”

She made a face. “I was very forward and I suppose quite good-looking in an unformed way. After I got rid of the braces on my teeth. Anyhow I had all kinds of gentlemen admirers and most of them had acne and fruity drawls, I couldn’t stand it. I met Howard and formed a towering crush instantly. My God, I was eighteen, Howard was nearly thirty. Do you know how girls mistake quietness in men for maturity?”

“I guess.”

“He was good-looking. Although actually he’s much better looking now than he was then. It took him years to get the baby fat out of his cheeks.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him.”

“You’d like him, Mort. He’d like you. He’s easy to get along with — he’s got all the social graces, he’s up on current events with that engagingly impressive manner of somebody who knows all the inside dirt about anything you’d care to mention. He doesn’t drop names; he drops facts. He can tell you the real inside story behind the Rhodesian troubles or the making of King Kong, anything. I was thoroughly impressed, and madly flattered by his noticing me. I remember how surprised I was by how hot his face looked the first time he asked me out for a date.” The memory provoked her wry chuckle.

“So you were married and lived unhappily ever after.”

“We had a good year or two,” she said in a muted way.

“What went wrong?”

“Everything dried up at once. Robert was born just before Christmas in nineteen fifty-five and I think that was supposed to occupy my complete attention while Howard was off solving affairs of earth-shaking importance in his office. I hated every minute of it. The little snotling wasn’t my cup of tea. I was still too damn young — I missed the freedoms I’d had.” She felt the tears coming. “You can’t believe how quickly our marriage degenerated into one of those ‘You already owe me three back-rubs’ things.” She plucked at a ragged fingernail. “I find it fascinating to realize that the first time I met Howard I believed him to be a man so smooth you could skate on him. How the polish wore off. It’s inconceivable I could have misled myself so completely.”

“We’re none of us immune to that,” Mort said. “I’ve been married three times.”

“A typical Hollywood success story.”

He prompted her. “And then you got divorced.”

“That was the most humiliating part of it. He left me, you know. Not the other way round. Does that surprise you?”

“Some, yes.”

“I guess I’d decided to make the best of the bad bargain for Robert’s sake. Trying to force myself to grow up and behave like a responsible adult. I was working in documentary films then, in Washington for one of the TV stations. It gave me outside contacts with the world and I was willing to settle for that. At least I had part of a life. Then Howard found a little blonde somewhere. For a little while he persuaded himself he couldn’t live without her. It was only an excuse to screw up the courage to leave me. He left one day while I was at work. I didn’t know where the hell he was for three days. I had the cops searching, I called everybody at the State Department, I was distraught — not because I missed him but just because I was so completely in the dark. I feel the same way right now about Robert but I’m older and I suppose it doesn’t show so much, except for this silly talking jag. Then I got his letter in the mail. I suppose it was easier for him to say that kind of thing in a letter. It was a twelve-page single-spaced diatribe, typed. Meticulously listing all my faults.”

“He sounds like a real bastard.”

“Not really. Together we were bad — we were terrible for each other, we brought out the absolute worst. We made each other into wretched creatures. I used to think I hated him, of course. Now I’m not sure. Maybe I made him into the thing that I hated... Am I coming to pieces, Mort? Christ, I feel as if somebody somewhere is sticking pins in a wax effigy.”

“You’re jittery. It’ll pass — you’ll settle down. You’re strong.”

“Strong. In the sense that a skunk is a strong animal.”

“Oh, come off it, darling.”

“There you go again. Didn’t I warn you about that?”

“I most humbly beg your forgiveness.” He showed her his grin. “You started out to tell me about your son.”

“Do you know what I think of when you ask me about Robert? A picture he pinned up in his bathroom. A photograph of General Patton pissing in the Rhine. It was so Robert, so quintessentially Robert. He’s so greedy for life and at the same time so alienated by it. He went through a wild period in college, much wilder than mine was. One time I went down to the University of Arizona to visit him, a surprise visit, and got to Tucson fairly late at night. I stopped in front of a fraternity house that looked like the right one and asked a kid if Robert Lundquist lived there. The kid was sitting on the porch reading under a light. He looked out into the darkness at my car and said in a bored voice, ‘Yeah, he lives here. Bring him in.’ I think he stayed drunk two whole semesters and spent another year or two high on grass. But you know he turned out all right in spite of everything his parents could do to screw him up.”

Her voice broke. “So greedy for life.”

“How’d he get into the Peace Corps?”

“Howard wanted him to go to law school. Robert didn’t want that. He still hasn’t got any idea what he wants to do with himself. He told me a few years ago he thought it was ridiculous to have to make those decisions at nineteen. When you’re fifty years old, why should you have to spend your life in libraries and courtrooms because some kid decided thirty years earlier that you ought to be a lawyer? And you know he was absolutely right. So he volunteered for the Peace Corps. It was something worthwhile to do while he was making up his mind about the future. That’s all — nothing peculiar. But he’s got a great deal of dedication. One of the facts he keeps harping on — he’s a computer-bank of random facts — is that the governments of the world spend the same amount of money on children every year that they spend on deadly weapons every two hours. Once I asked him why he hadn’t joined radical protest groups, and do you know what he said? He said he didn’t believe in protests because in order to be a protester you had to take an inferior position to the people with whom you were pleading. When he went off to Mexico he said he was doing his bit to try and help the children win out over the cannons. So if you’re asking me if I love my son, the answer’s yes. How could anybody not love a kid like that?”

But just then she was thinking about the hope she’d had, and never articulated aloud to a living soul, that perhaps one day Robert would come and live near her. She’d tried to stand back and convince herself that she was making a mistake to count on Robert, even just in those fantasies, to fill the role of strong man in her life. But she didn’t really care. All she knew was that she wanted him near.

Mort covered her hand with his own; he scowled earnestly. “He’ll get out of it, darling. I know he will.”

“I hope he does it before I fly to pieces,” she replied.

Chapter 2

At eight that night she couldn’t stand it any more. She backed the car out viciously against the mailbox post and drove away leaving bits of red glass in the street.

She walked into the lobby in high dudgeon, browbeat the clerk into revealing the room number and went up in the elevator with a tourist couple and a bellboy. The Iowans were talking about Knott’s Berry Farm. She had to curb her tongue to keep from screaming at them to shut up.

Howard answered the door in T-shirt and shaving cream; evidently he’d been expecting room service. He went all colors at the sight of her.

She thrust past him into the room and kicked the door shut.

Howard said, “I’m sorry. You don’t know what a day it’s been. This problem came up at the conference and then I had to drive one of the Japanese to the airport and of all the damn stupid things the car had a flat and the idiots hadn’t included a spare, and the poor bastard missed his plane and we had a hell of a flap—”

“Soon to be made into a major motion picture,” she said with icy disbelief. “You left instructions with the desk that you weren’t taking calls from me, didn’t you. I’ve been phoning you for six hours.”

“Carole, damn it, I’ve got nothing to tell you. They’ve had nothing to tell me.”

“It was on the car radio just now. It’s been on the news for hours. They’re Cubans.”

“All right. What of it? Nobody knows where Robert is. Isn’t that the bottom line?”

“You might have had the courtesy to call me. At least to let me know they’re getting somewhere.”

“They’re going in circles,” he said. “Accumulating useless facts. Don’t you think I’ve been keeping in touch with Washington? There’s nothing. Nothing hard.”

She sat down, handbag in lap. “If it’s not too much strain I’d appreciate your telling me everything you know.”

“I could give you twenty minutes of utterly useless information. Would that help?”

“What I want from you,” she said with quaking control, “is the stuff that hasn’t been in the news. And don’t give me any of that need-to-know horseshit. I’m his mother. I need to know.”

He went to the bureau where he’d scattered the contents of his pockets; he picked up the wristwatch and looked at it. He actually looked at his watch. She wanted to scream at him.

“I’ve got a plane to catch,” he explained.

“You don’t go out this door until you’ve talked to me.”

He wiped the foam off his jaw with a towel. “Over the years it’s belatedly occurred to me that you have an abrasive wit and the acidulous instincts of a barracuda but just possibly, behind those defenses, you’re as vulnerable as any of us. So I’m going to ignore this fishwife assault. Now if you’ll just take it easy for a moment—”

“I don’t want your goddamned forgiveness, Howard. I want information.”

He found a cigarette in the litter. “All right. If it’ll ease your mind. There’s nothing in it that helps us. First you must understand that it isn’t my department. I’ve been on the horn with Mark Blaisedell but it’s been hard to get a clear picture so early. To some extent it’s a Central Intelligence Agency matter and I’m sure you know how jealous they are of information — they don’t share it with State unless they’re forced to. I don’t have the clout to force them. It’s possible they know things we don’t know but there’s nothing I can do about that.”

“Just tell me what you do know.”

“Well it’s our best judgment that the terrorists probably are Cuban exiles. We don’t know who they are, actually, but the circumstantial evidence points to that conclusion. This morning a ransom demand, a penciled note, was received through the mail slot of a Venezuelan newspaper in Caracas.”

“Howard, I know that much. I’ve heard the radio. What did the ransom note say?”

“They want ten million dollars. In cash. American dollars. Small bills, unmarked. And they want eleven political prisoners released from jails in Latin America.”

“What prisoners?”

“Five in Venezuelan prisons, four in Colombia, two in Mexico. They were convicted of various guerrilla crimes — hijacking, violating gun laws, murdering Cuban communist rebel organizers, so forth. What they have in common is that all eleven are anti-Castro people. They’re not all Cubans but they’re all right-wing. Two of them are Germans from Paraguay. Therefore we’re assuming the people who kidnaped Harrison Gordon and Robert must be anti-Castro Cuban exiles who want to get their leaders out of jail and raise money to finance guerrilla action against Cuba.”

“What’s being done to rescue the hostages?”

“Very little, I imagine. It’s not like Entebbe, you know. Nobody knows where the hostages are. How can you mount a rescue expedition if you don’t know where to send it?”

She said, “Will the ransom be paid?”

“I don’t know. And I don’t know whether the eleven prisoners will be released. It’s not up to me, Carole.”

“What’s Washington doing about it?”

“I don’t know what pressures are being applied. This thing’s in the laps of the governments of Mexico and Venezuela and Colombia. It’s up to them to decide whether to meet the demands or not. They’re the ones against whom the demands were levied. Officially it’s not Washington’s problem — only indirectly, since some of the hostages are Americans.”

“Including a United States Ambassador. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

“Of course it does. But it’s an awkward situation—”

“Awkward situation. Good Christ.”

“Carole, there simply isn’t a hell of a lot we can do about it right now. Our hands are tied, on top of which we’re blindfolded.”

He stubbed out the cigarette and looked at his watch again, strapped it to his wrist, and collected the shirt from its hanger. Howard’s once athletic physique had been worn down by an unstable and lazy personality; he was no longer trim but neither was he a wreck.

He buttoned it, top to bottom, and reached for his tie. “I don’t know what else to tell you. Does any of this help? I don’t see how it could. I don’t know about you but I feel just as much in the dark as I did this morning.”

She realized the extent of the difficulty with which he was keeping up the calm front. He had to knot the tie three times before he got it right; by the end of the performance he was reduced to oaths and savage jerks at the fabric.

She felt a residue of affection toward him. It was not any wish for reconciliation — too much blood had flowed under the bridge — but she felt sorrow for him and it made her soften her tone when she spoke. “Of course there’s one thing you haven’t told me.”

He was distributing things in his pockets. “Don’t be silly.”

“Of course there is, Howard. I’m not an absolute fool. You don’t kidnap people for ransom and leave the delivery date wide open. There’s a deadline, isn’t there?”

His hands became still. His eyes closed briefly, his lips worked and finally he said, “Today’s Tuesday. They want the money and the release of the eleven political prisoners by Friday noon. Two and a half days from now.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly. She got up to leave. “I do wish you’d make some attempt to make things a bit easier for me. Do you think I enjoy prying things from you with a crowbar?”

“I didn’t want to upset you—”

“Upset me? As if I weren’t already distraught, you mean? Didn’t it occur to you that knowing there’s a finite limit to this suspense might be preferable to dragging out the agony indefinitely?”

“I’m sorry.” He actually sounded miserable. “I’m truly sorry. I didn’t think.”

“Please think next time. Don’t keep things from me — it’s cruel.”

His hands gestured — helpless, apologetic.

“I won’t keep you,” she said. “You’ll miss your plane.”

“I’ll keep you posted.”

“Will you,” she said drily. “I’ll be in Washington tomorrow afternoon — at the Hay-Adams if they’re not booked up.”

“There’s no need for that.”

“Isn’t there? I don’t see where I’ve got much choice, do you?”

“I don’t suppose there’d be any point in my asking you to trust me.”

“It’s a little late for that.”

It made him wince. “I deserved that, I guess. All right. Do you want to stay at the house — would it be more comfortable than a hotel?”

“God no.” She went.

The stewardess came down the aisle looking at laps to make certain of the fastenings of seat belts; a man’s twangy voice scratched from the loudspeakers, something about cruising altitude and the landmarks over which they were destined to pass — landmarks that doubtless would be invisible through the clouds below. A junior stewardess who looked no more than sixteen was demonstrating the use of a yellow oxygen mask and the lap-belt inspector was asking if Carole wanted a drink after take-off — Carole had to ask her to repeat the question.

She hated planes: the stale air redolent of tobacco smoke and kerosene, the immobile imprisonment at six hundred miles an hour, the way even first-class seats had been designed with not quite enough leg room.

With her eyes shut and her head vibrating against the white paper antimacassar she sipped Dewar’s and drifted in thought. The mad hurry of the morning recycled itself through her mind — Mort Kyle walking her to her car at noon: “Don’t feel you have to rush back for God’s sake. If you’re still in Washington I’ll ship the final cut there and you can screen it at the AFI.”

At the car she had stopped to fish for her keys, only half listening to him; she’d said abruptly, “How do you make contact with gangsters?”

He was taken aback. She said, “I’m serious.”

It made him show his teeth. “You walk into any studio in town and ask to see the head man.”

“You’ve dealt with the Mafia, I know you have. Nobody can produce pictures in this industry without knowing them.”

“What are you after?”

“I don’t know. Desperation, I suppose. I want to hire a tarnished knight to go into the jungle and rescue my son. Does it sound imbecilic?”

“To tell the truth yes, it does, if only because you don’t even know what jungle to look in.”

“There was that private eye who rescued Marlon’s son...”

“I know what he’d tell you. He’d tell you to forget it.”

“I’ve got to do something.”

“There’s nothing. You’re doing all you can. As for gangsters, I know some of the union people. They’d hardly do you any good.”

It had been a far-fetched impulse — a fantasy of panic. Now she remembered it with rue.

Warren would have known what to do. She thought of him infrequently now — he’d died more than two years ago trying to rescue a charred Rhodesian family from a napalmed hut. Her brother had been as quixotic as her son was; she thought it must be something in the genes. She wondered if she had it too.

He’d had a great importance in her life. She’d relied on her brother although it was quite possible he’d never known of it. It was a thing of the spirit — merely knowing Warren was alive, knowing he was her brother, knowing he’d come if she needed him: There’d been equilibrium in that.

Warren the intellectual adventurer: Right now he’d have been hiring a helicopter or galvanizing forces or interviewing jungle natives to find the terrorists’ hideout. He’d have known where to look, whom to recruit, how to handle it. Warren Marchand — brilliant journalist, compassionate missionary of the spirit, troubled activist. For months she’d grieved his passing. She’d kept a scrapbook of his dispatches from Beirut and Saigon and Johannesburg and Salisbury and Belfast — Warren the eclectic adventurer. Her inscribed copy of his first book was nearly worn off its bindings: Published in 1965 and nearly everything he’d predicted for Viet Nam had come to pass.

He’d free-lanced for the high-paying magazines; not a reporter really — it was his observations for which they’d paid him. You read a Marchand article not for facts but for truths: He showed you the flavor and the significance of things.

Every six months or so he’d appear on her doorstep — the quick Marchand grip and she’d drop anything, cancel any date, to go out to dinner with him and catch up on the latest chapter of his picaresque life. He’d been Robert’s favorite, of course; possibly it was Warren’s example that had inspired Robert to join the Peace Corps.

The genes, she thought. The same good genes in Robert had overcome the rotten upbringing. The custody fight had ended in uneasy truce after the ludicrous kidnapings and spiritings about: A split-custody agreement by which Robert spent much of the year in boarding school and divided his vacations scrupulously between them.

Robert. Not Bob, never Bobby, but Robert. Robert Lundquist. Robert Warren Lundquist. She was still counting on him. He’d have to get out of it, she needed him too much for him to let her down.

Thursday she haunted the telephones and spent half the afternoon sitting stonily before Howard’s desk browbeating him with silent baleful looks. She badgered him into making constant phone calls: State Intelligence, the CIA, even someone at the White House.

There was nothing. No one knew whether the Latin American governments planned to accede or hang tough. No one knew who the guerrillas were or where the hostages were held. There was no further ransom demand; no word at all from the terrorists.

“The deadline,” she kept saying, “is noon tomorrow,” and watched it annoy him.

Midafternoon — the Latin American desks began to send copies of reports into Howard’s office. There were rivalries among Mexico, Venezuela and Colombia; things were bogged down in maddeningly trivial disputes; it looked as if the three governments might fail to reach agreement on a policy of dealing with the demands. Mexico and Colombia favored paying the ransom; Venezuela, taking a hard line, looked as if it would refuse to negotiate, let alone pay.

She screamed at him and he bolted upright from his chair, shouting at her: “Do you think I’m any less frustrated than you are? Do you think I like feeling impotent to do anything about it?”

She waited for him to breathe; she said with dead calm, “I want to see somebody in the CIA. Somebody high up. You can arrange it.”

“If you think those guys will tell you a damn thing you’re out of your mind.”

“You make the appointment. I’ll do the interviewing.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Now, Howard. Do it now.” She was unrelenting.

He sat severely behind a desk beneath the official photographic portrait of the President. The desk looked to be mahogany. The man wore a checked bow tie on a starched white shirt and wore his salt-and-pepper hair in sleek fingerwaves; his glasses had rectangular lenses and thin white-gold frames and he had the look of an aging matinee idol with a second-string touring road-company. His name was O’Hillary.

She knew how she must appear to him — a slender woman, very tense with eyes hungry for information; and rather a bit helpless. She was not above lying, not above playing a role; she was not above anything.

She said, “I had an appointment with a Mr. Ryerson but they told me he’d been taken suddenly busy and couldn’t see me.”

“I know. A harmless lie. Sit down, Mrs. Lundquist. Actually, George Ryerson farmed you out to me because I’m dealing with this Mexican mess. By coming here you’ve avoided the middleman, so it’s not really a runaround we’ve given you.”

She said, “What’s being done about my son?”

The man ran a palm over his head carefully, not dislodging the neat wave in his hair. “I’m sure your ex-husband’s told you everything he could.”

“Howard’s part of this bureaucracy of yours and possibly that explains why he has faith that everything possible is being done. I’m sorry to be blunt but I want to know what’s going on.”

“We’re doing all we can. Surely you must believe that.”

“Specifically what does that consist of?”

“At the moment it consists of a massive attempt on numerous different fronts to acquire information. We can’t make any moves while we’re blind. You can understand that.”

“Do you know where they are? The hostages?”

“No. No idea.”

“Do you know who the terrorists are?”

“We have suspicions but not facts. We believe they may be a splinter group of anti-Castro Cuban exiles — left over, so to speak, from the Bay of Pigs days. Determined to foment the overthrow of the Castro government. We’ve sent investigators — most of them from the Federal Bureau of Investigation — into south Florida to find out what they can from the members of the Cuban community there. At this point in time they’ve been able to shed no light on this. I can’t really tell you any more than that.”

“What do the governments plan to do — the Mexicans and the others?”

“About meeting the demands? They’re still arguing the point among themselves.”

“And Washington has nothing to say about this?”

“I’m sure the normal pressures have been applied, Mrs. Lundquist. That’s out of my department.”

He made a point of looking at his watch.

She said, “It’s kind of you to grant me this time. I realize you’ve only done it because somebody somewhere must owe a favor to my ex-husband, but I appreciate it all the same.”

“Please feel free to call on me at any time.”

She didn’t rise from the chair. “Mr. O’Hillary. I know you’ve been less than candid with me. I know it’s inevitable — it’s the way you are, the way you operate, it’s ingrained. Information is doled out on a need-to-know basis and I, as a sideline noncombatant, don’t need to know anything at all from the official point of view. But I think you know a great deal that you haven’t told me and if I find out later that this was the case I intend to make a noise. I have a certain amount of clout myself, particularly with the press, and I’m capable of making a rather loud noise. It seems to me your agency is under quite a cloud already these days — I’m sure you want to avoid any further embarrassments if you can. Am I making some sort of sense to you?”

“What do you want? Truth or pretense? The truth is we don’t know where those people are, Mrs. Lundquist.”

“The truth but not the whole truth. Tell me this: If you did know where they were, what would you be doing about it?”

Her statement dangled like a baited hook. She saw O’Hillary begin to smile; she’d caught him out — he hadn’t credited her with enough cleverness.

She said after a moment, “You probably wouldn’t do a damn thing. Very possibly you know exactly who these Cubans are and where they’re hiding. But they’re on our side, aren’t they?”

O’Hillary cocked his head a bit to one side; the quizzical hint of a smile didn’t change. He seemed to be waiting for a rider to her statement.

She said, “For all I know they have your tacit support. Even possibly your active support.”

“Kidnaping an American Ambassador? Hardly.” O’Hillary folded his arms across his chest — a blatant indication of rejection, both of the accusation and of Carole. “You’re quite wrong.”

“If this were a scenario for a Hollywood movie,” she said, “and I were reading it as the director, I’d have to ask the screenwriter why the secret agents aren’t doing the standard secret-agent things. Why haven’t you made it clear to these terrorists that if any harm befalls these important American hostages, then the CIA will spare no expense to track down these animals, wherever in the world they may choose to hide, and exterminate them?”

“Gunboat diplomacy of that sort went out quite a while ago, Mrs. Lundquist. I understand your feelings very well. One of the hostages in that party happens to be a fairly good friend of mine. I’m keenly concerned for him, just as you are for your son. But I’ve had to learn, painfully over the years, that indignation is a pointless response to terrorism.”

“Is it? I’m not sure of that. Maybe I’m not jaded enough.”

“This would hardly be an appropriate time to beat our breasts and thunder threats of retribution against these Cubans. They’d only laugh at us — at best — or start murdering hostages to prove their seriousness. That’s what we’re trying to avoid. We’re keeping a very low profile on this, but it’s not for lack of keen concern.”

His unflappability unnerved her; she controlled herself rigidly, realizing that her anger put her at a disadvantage against O’Hillary’s cool dispassion. She knew there had to be a better way to handle this. Warren would have known how. She said, “Don’t you people keep tabs on these Cuban counterrevolutionary groups?”

“That’s classified.”

“Of course you do. And if you’ve been keeping tabs on them you must have known something was in the wind. Possibly even known about this kidnaping before it took place. And if you knew about it why didn’t you put a stop to it?”

“How?”

The single word seemed to reveal the extent of O’Hillary’s knowledge. She hated him then.

He stood up. “I really must get back to work, Mrs. Lundquist. The minute anything breaks we’ll be in touch with your ex-husband. I’m afraid there’s nothing further I can tell you. Except perhaps this. I think you credit us with far more power in the world than we possess. We’re talking about Cuban terrorists who committed a crime in Mexico, managed to involve two other Latin American governments, and probably are hiding out somewhere between Durango and Rio de Janeiro. Only in the most indirect sense is this an American affair. We can’t dictate policy to the government of Venezuela, no matter what the pundits may suggest — anyone who follows the ups and downs of OPEC policies knows that much. We simply don’t rule the world. You need to understand that. Even if we did, as long as totalitarian solutions are unacceptable, then problems like this one will not be solved.”

He held out his hand to shake hers; he said with a smooth smile and a soft cadence in his voice, “‘Be wary of what you desire — you’ll get it.’ Emerson, I believe.”

It was one of those impressive curtain lines you spoke as you went out the door; O’Hillary wasn’t leaving, but he turned away from her and walked toward a filing cabinet.

There was nothing left to be said and she saw no point in spoiling his contrived finale. She left his office and, on her way past the secretary’s desk, glanced at the girl’s intercom. The On button was depressed. Either the secretary had taken the conversation down or she’d taped it.

Carole, unsurprised, waited for the guard to escort her to the elevator. She felt neither anger nor disappointment; she felt drained.

She awoke conscious of having dreamed — something fearful that left her short of breath — but she could not recover it.

She’d left a wake-up call for eight; it was seven-twenty. Friday.

Sitting bolt upright she said, “Robert?”

She arrived ahead of public visiting hours and was forced to wait on the Twenty-first Street entrance, fuming while she cooled her heels on the sidewalk. The State Department building was modern and massive, seven stories, heavy with import but not with style. After two minutes of it she could stand it no longer. She found a public phone.

Despite everything the telephone company could do she finally reached Howard. “Tell the bastards to let me in.”

Thus armed she got past the guard. The receptionist signed her in; she made her way to the familiar cubicle. It wasn’t much — a partitioned roomlet in government green.

She said, “Stand up when a lady comes into your office, you son of a bitch.”

He gave her an anemic grin. “Come on in.”

She deposited her handbag, sat down, watched him light up a cigarette. “Did you sleep?”

“Not much.”

“Neither did I.”

He said, “There’s been some movement. Mexico and Colombia have put up the ransom between them. They’ve agreed to release the six prisoners in their jails. They’ve broadcast it — I don’t know if you heard the news?”

“I listened to it. I’m not sure I heard it.”

“Venezuela’s balking. The money’s been raised without them but five of the political prisoners are in Caracas and the Venezuelans insist they aren’t going to release them. It’s the standard hang-tough policy.”

“Are they that heartless?”

“The only way to survive this kind of terrorism is to have a firm policy for dealing with it and to stick to that policy. The only real surprise has been the willingness of the other two countries to knuckle under. Venezuela’s posture is, diplomatically speaking, the correct one. Of course usually you negotiate with the terrorists while you’re hanging tough. In this case there’s nobody to negotiate with. Appeals have been broadcast on the radio in Latin America but it’s been a one-sided conversation.”

“Hasn’t there been any word from them at all?”

“Yes. A note last night to a newspaper in Mexico City. Giving details of where and how the ransom was to be paid. A helicopter drop over a fairly remote forest area on the Yucatan Peninsula.”

“Are they sure it’s genuine? I mean, couldn’t anybody take advantage of a situation like this and deliver a ransom note?”

“It appears to be genuine. It’s been examined. It matches the earlier note — the one that turned up in Caracas. Half a page of anti-Castro propaganda, same as before.”

“Is anybody searching that Yucatan area?”

“In a way.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You can’t send troops crashing around in the forest. They’d give themselves away instantly. And you can’t use planes or helicopters for the same reason.”

“Then nothing’s being done. That’s what you’re telling me.”

“Not quite. The helicopter that delivers the ransom will photograph every foot of the ground under it. Both standard film and infrared. There’ll also be — I shouldn’t tell you this, it’s top secret — an overflight by extreme high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft using that James Bondish sort of high-resolution telescopic photography. There’s a fair chance they’ll spot the pickup of the ransom and be able to trail it back to its destination. Also of course there’s a radio transmitter concealed in the container but that probably won’t help — usually they’re smart enough to take the money out of the container and put it in duffel bags before they move it. Still, you have to try.”

She said, “They won’t be released right away, will they? Even if they get the ransom.”

“They’ll want some assurance the political prisoners have been freed and flown to Argentina.”

“Argentina? Do you mean to tell me the Argentine government has agreed to give them asylum?”

“Not exactly. They’ve agreed to keep hands off until Gordon and the other hostages have been released. Which means, probably, that the terrorists must have set up some clandestine escape route to get their people out of Argentina. Probably across Paraguay or something. It can be done — it’s easy to disappear down there.”

“Then it doesn’t end at noon today, does it.”

“Did you ever think it would?”

Noon came and went. She sat listless, her eyes drowsy with memories. Robert’s nine-year-old feud with the piano; his erratic career in college; his positive mania for justice.

Howard was on the phone. “There’s no movement at all?... Very well. Thanks, I’m sorry to keep bothering you.”

Carole said, “If I had charge of the assembled might of this technocracy I don’t imagine I’d be sitting on my ass the way these people are doing. I’d have had those hostages out of there.”

“You and Moshe Dayan.”

“It’s not possible that an organization as powerful as the United States government can fail to locate and rescue its own Ambassador. This whole system is rotten with the most suicidal and hysterical incompetence I’ve ever seen. Somebody should fold, spindle and mutilate the whole bureaucratic population of this town.”

“Do sit down, for God’s sake.”

She paced back and forth — four steps, turn, four steps.

“How naïve you are,” Howard said. “It’s strange how familiar your tune sounds. You can’t understand how the most powerful government on earth can fail to lick a handful of scruffy terrorists. Don’t you remember hawks saying exactly the same thing about Viet Nam?”

She professed not to hear him. “What’s the CIA doing?”

“How do I know?”

She advanced upon the desk. “What’s that man’s number — what’s his name, O’Hillary.”

“He won’t give you the time of day after the way you iced him yesterday.”

“Then you call him.”

“It’s pointless.”

“Call him anyway.”

“What for?” He met her eyes. “Carole, it’s no good browbeating me any more. It won’t accomplish anything. We’re both upset as it is — what’s the point of henpecking each other to distraction?”

She studied his face. His eyes were raw and pouched; there was a red spot on his lip where he’d chewed the chapped flesh. She said, “The conventional wisdom on the left is that the Department of State is nothing more than an arm of the Pentagon and the CIA. How much truth is there in that?”

“Some.” She was surprised by his candor. “It depends who’s in the White House. Right now we’re better off than we used to be.”

“If these terrorists were left-wing radicals, would this thing be handled the same way?”

“Terrorism is equally reprehensible whatever direction it comes from.”

“Don’t give me the official line.”

“I don’t think—”

The phone interrupted him. He picked it up and she watched his face change. He was looking straight at her but his eyes lost focus and he shrank.

“All right. Thank you for calling.” He cradled it very gently as if he were afraid of disturbing something; from that action she knew what he was going to say before he spoke.

“They have killed him.” He uttered the words with great slow precision as if by enunciating them fully he could himself believe in their reality. “They have murdered Robert.”

She couldn’t breathe. “They haven’t — they can’t. They mustn’t.”

He came around the desk blindly, groping for her. “He’s dead. My God, he’s dead, Carole.”

She found herself submitting to his embrace. Her eyes were painfully dry and she seemed incapable of getting oxygen into her lungs. She was aware of the tobacco-stink of his shirt and the tension in his arms. Silent, open-mouthed, trying to hold onto consciousness, she felt him weep.

Then she heard herself say, “Something must be done.”