The Favor (29 page)

“Günner? Through someone I had known in a
political action committee. That was five months ago—he was
authentic, you know? What you Americans call ‘the real thing.’ He
asked me if I wanted something more than marching in antinuclear
weapons demonstrations; he said it was possible to achieve more in
a single afternoon than in all the rallies that have been staged
since the beginning of time, if one simply had the courage. I
thought he was a hero of the underground struggle—you should have
seen the scars on his chest and thigh, great purplish things. He
was no debating student.”

“He got those scars in Mexico, running
through the night in his pajamas, trying to keep his skin together.
It didn’t have anything to do with the Heroic Struggle for the
Oppressed Masses; he’s just a salesman of secrets whose business
practices managed to make the wrong people angry. Not very many of
us are heroes, not on either side, and your Günner is no Robin
Hood. He does it for the money—anybody’s money.”

“Who shot him in Mexico? Was it the
Americans?”

“It was me.”

The .45 was still lying on the seat beside
him; he picked it up and put it in Janine’s glove compartment—she
might have some use for it along the way, and he had a hell of a
lot more faith in her capacities in that line than he had in Amalia
Brouwer’s. At least Janine didn’t turn white when she found out her
chauffeur wasn’t a boy scout.

They drove back through the center of town in
silence. It was just as well; Guinness was still busy with his
rearview mirror, checking for excessively familiar cars in the
street behind them, and he didn’t want to talk to Amalia anyway. He
had rather decided that he didn’t like Amalia—she didn’t strike him
as the type who would, get over her youth as quickly as one might
have hoped. All that adolescent disapproval was beginning to get
rather badly on his nerves.

It was nearly one thirty, but the lunchtime
traffic hadn’t given any indication of an intention to slack off.
Guinness took the car in a wide loop that ran over the Amstel,
almost touching the railroad tracks, and then back down through
some of the smaller streets near a star shaped junction of canals
called the Apollohal. Finally he was convinced. There were no bad
guys on their trail. They were clean.

“Will I be meeting my father in Germany?”
There was a certain ambiguous quality in her voice, as if she might
have wanted to suggest that the encounter was something she would
just as happily avoid.

They were driving along the length of one of
the city’s vast parks, the one that, looking down from Janine’s
bedroom window, was just visible as a line of treetops. Inside,
along the walkways that threaded aimlessly through neatly clipped
lawns, middle aged couples, seeming to hold each other up, and
young women with children made their uncaring way. Apparently there
was a faint breath of wind because the leaves flickered on the
poplar trees, but no one looked cold or reluctant to be out of
doors. One had the sense that this world could be, on the whole, a
very pleasant place if one simply had the wisdom not to tamper with
it. But not everyone was so blessed.

“I shouldn’t think so,” Guinness answered,
careful not to glance at his rearview mirror. “I shouldn’t think
that would be possible for him—at least he didn’t mention it.”

He stopped at a crosswalk to let a stream of
festive looking humanity pass in front of them. It was like a
uniformed army, all the men with camera cases dangling from their
shoulders and most of the women in short sleeved blouses and tight,
pastel colored trousers—and an astonishing number of them were
freshly sunburned on their arms and necks. They took forever,
talking among themselves in loud voices that were almost inaudible
inside the car and, in spite of their apparent cheerfulness,
walking with the rolling, footsore gait of weary soldiers. Guinness
and his passenger maintained a perfect silence as they went by.

“What is he like, my father?”

“I haven’t any idea,” Guinness was surprised
into saying—he had thought, somehow, that the subject was closed,
that Amalia Brouwer had wanted it to be closed; but apparently not.
“Like I said, I’ve only met him twice. I doubt if I’ve spent a
total of five hours in his presence, and I’d never heard his voice
before three days ago.”

“Was that here, in Amsterdam?”

“No—Munich. It wasn’t possible for him to
come here, for reasons that had more to do with your safety than
with his, so he asked me.”

“And you came, all that way. Did he pay
you?”

“No.” Guinness shook his head, wondering why
he was offended at the suggestion. “No, he didn’t pay me.”

He could feel the pressure of her hand on his
backrest—she was leaning forward, and the tension in her slender
body was something you experienced more than sensed.

“But if not for money, for what? You say you
hardly know him, and yet you travel half the length of Europe and
risk your life. How can he be a stranger if you have done all this
simply because he asked you?”

“It was a favor, and you can owe a favor to a
stranger. I owed him.”

“What is his name? His real name, what is
it?” She was peering at him through the rearview mirror, and
Guinness didn’t like the expression on her face. She was merely
curious about a man who was merely interesting, and he found he was
offended by that as well.

“I don’t owe you anything,” he snapped, his
eyes narrowing to slits as he studied the road. “Certainly not
that. His name is his business.”

And that was where they left it. There were
no more questions, and Guinness turned around and began his long,
angular approach to Janine’s apartment, where he would be rid of
the burden of Amalia Brouwer’s youth. She would be Janine’s
problem, and it was possible that Janine would be a better
companion and courier, would find Emil Kätzner’s child less of a
burden to her attention.

Janine’s building was one of five on that
particular block, the second from the corner as Guinness drove
past. And he did drive past; he went on for several more streets
and then turned away and covered another two before doubling back
and running parallel to the way he had come.

Partially it was a matter of habit—over the
years stealth had become so ingrained in his character that he
almost couldn’t walk to the corner for a newspaper without checking
the approaches. Wearisome, but it kept you alive.

He parked the car in a side street, where it
would be invisible from any of Janine’s windows or to anyone
keeping watch from either the front entrance or the fire escape
that ran down the back.

“Wait here,” he said, his tone suggesting
that inquiries would be resented. He got out and walked to the
corner; Janine’s building was a block down, but it was taller than
those behind it and the balcony off her bedroom was in plain
sight.

The glass doors leading out were shut.

16

“
In the summer I like to leave them open
to the outside. It makes me feel less alone.”

Apparently she was little afraid of burglars
up there on the top floor, because she seemed to keep her balcony
doors ajar even when she was gone—last night, at least, when she
and Guinness had finally been able to come back and go to bed, the
doors had stood wide open and he had no recollection of her going
near them. And this morning, when he had left after breakfast, the
curtains were restless with the gusting land breezes.

Even if she had closed them before leaving
herself, she had been back now for a couple of hours. She would be
waiting for him. She would have gone into her bedroom to pack a
bag. She might even have decided to sit there on her vast bed,
since the telephone was on her night stand. She had a long drive
ahead of her and there had been little enough time for sleep the
night before, so she might even have lain down, just to close her
eyes for a little while.

After all, why shouldn’t Janine conform to
the pattern of her sex? Where else but in her bedroom—her
sanctuary, the scene of her private reality—would she spend the
time until he came to her with Amalia Brouwer and her marching
orders?

And yet, the balcony doors were closed.

He should have known, of course. He should
have foreseen this. The sense of being watched he had experienced
that morning, which had disappeared almost as soon as he had left
the museum, as soon as he had separated from Janine—they had
followed her. They had figured out that, eventually, she could
always lead them back to him, so they had left him to himself and
followed her. He couldn’t fault them since it was the obvious move.
He had no one he could blame but himself. He was supposed to be so
good at this business, the best there was—had he been fast asleep?
He should have listened to his own instincts and seen this coming;
he should have known.

Because it really was the obvious move. He
was the Soldier, the celebrated killer of men. Everyone has heard
of the Soldier; Janine had said it herself. His own gaudy
reputation prevented anything like close surveillance—there were
simply some men it was too dangerous to shadow; they had nasty
tempers and eyes in the backs of their heads. Everyone has heard of
the Soldier.

“
In the summer I like to leave them open
to the outside.”
But they were closed—two flat sheets of glass,
catching the early afternoon sun and throwing it down onto the
street in patches of hard light. It hurt your eyes to look at them.
They glittered like the windows of a hearse.
“It makes me feel
less alone.”

God, what had they done to her? Someone was
up there; some stranger had closed the balcony doors to shut out
whatever Janine had found to comfort her from beyond her balcony.
She was not alone now. She had visitors.

Flycatcher didn’t train his people to be
particularly refined about how they did their work; he rather
favored the sort who, as children, liked to set the cat’s tail on
fire and pull the wings from butterflies. And Flycatcher was
supposed to be a frightened man these days—after all, the Soldier,
that celebrated killer of men, was hot on his case—and frightened
men are frequently undiscriminating in their cruelty.

So, quite possibly, Janine now had more than
just one reason to rejoice in her association with the Prince of
Headsmen.

And then, of course, it could be nothing.
Perhaps Janine had merely shut her windows because she knew she
would be gone from home for several days—what could be more
sensible than that? In all probability she was at that very moment
in her kitchen, brewing up a thermos jug full of strong tea for the
drive to Düsseldorf, threatened by nothing more sinister than a
tendency of the hot water to splash when she poured it into her
Delft china pot. It could be, as he was beginning to suspect more
and more, that he needed that rest cure in London more than he
realized, that his nerves were playing tricks on him, making him
see in everything the oppression of his phantom enemies.

Except that he didn’t believe it for a thin
minute.

The buildings on that block were all about
the same height, and close together. It was impossible to tell for
certain from the ground, but probably their roofs didn’t have any
more pitch to them than would be required to let the rain run off,
and certainly getting to them wouldn’t involve overcoming anything
more serious than a locked door. That part would be a walk.

He couldn’t do it by himself—if there was
more than just one, or at most two, goons in there with Janine, he
would be a sitting duck. And there wasn’t a soul to help except
Amalia Brouwer.

So that settled that: it would have to be
Amalia Brouwer.

He went back to the car and took the keys out
of the ignition to open the trunk, hoping to find a coil of rope.
He was disappointed, of course: things were only that tidy in the
movies—there wasn’t even twenty feet of clothesline: there wasn’t
anything. Okay, so we do without.

“Listen,” he said, sitting with Amalia
Brouwer in the back seat of Janine’s gray Opel, holding her wrist
with just enough force to be sure he had her undivided attention.
“I want you to do something. There’s a building around the corner—I
want you to go up to the apartment on the top floor and knock on
the door. Just knock on the door, nothing else. There’s a peephole,
so stay where you can’t be seen from the inside, and if anybody you
don’t know opens up, if you hear anybody’s voice but mine, you run
like the devil’s after you, because he will be.”

“Just knock? Is that all?”

“Just knock. I’ll squire you around to the
front entrance, and then I want you to wait outside in the sunshine
for, say, fifteen minutes. There are five floors, so you can take
your time going up the stairs—there’s no elevator—and then,
precisely twenty minutes after I’ve left you, not one second off in
either direction, I want you to give a couple of good firm raps on
that door. Use the butt of your fist and make it sound like you
mean business. And for God’s sake be on time—twenty minutes; don’t
be late and don’t be early. Twenty minutes, on the tick. Got
it?”

She looked at him out of her curiously soft
eyes, the only inheritance Guinness found himself able to trace
from Emil Kätzner, and her face tilted at an inquisitive angle as,
apparently, she tried to read something from the tone of his voice
and the way his fingers formed a tight, not quite painful fetter
around her wrist. She was surprisingly calm, Guinness was happy to
note; perhaps Amalia Brouwer would do after all.

“Is there anything wrong?”

Guinness smiled. “I don’t know for sure,
Sweetheart, but it wouldn’t surprise me. It’s a funny world.”

He glanced down at the rather mannish watch
she was wearing and saw that it had a second hand—that was
something, anyway—and then let go of her wrist.