The Holcroft Covenant (18 page)

He told it all, leaving out nothing save the men of Wolfsschanze. He told it simply, even eloquently, hearing the conviction in his own voice, feeling the profound commitment in his mind, the stirrings of pain in his chest.

He gave her the figures: seven hundred and eighty million for the survivors of the Holocaust, and the descendants of those survivors still in need. Everywhere. Two million for each of the surviving eldest children, to be used as each saw fit. Six months—possibly longer—of a collective commitment.

Finally, he told her of the pact in death the three fathers made, taking their lives only after every detail in Geneva was confirmed and iron bound.

When he had finished, he felt the perspiration rolling down his forehead. “It’s up to us now,” he said. “And a man in Berlin—Kessler’s son. The three of us have to finish what they started.”

“It all sounds so incredible,” she said quietly. “But I really don’t see why it should concern me.”

He was stunned at her calm, at her complete equanimity. She had listened to him in silence for nearly half an hour, heard revelations that had to be shattering to her, yet she displayed no reaction whatsoever.
Nothing
. “Haven’t you understood a word I’ve said?”

“I understand that you’re very upset,” said Gretchen Beaumont in her soft, echoing voice. “But I’ve been very upset for most of my life, Mr. Holcroft. I’ve been that way because of Wilhelm von Tiebolt. He is nothing to me.”

“He
knew
that, can’t you see? He tried to make up for it.”

“With money?”

“More than money.”

Gretchen leaned forward and slowly reached out to touch his forehead. With her fingers extended, she wiped away the beads of perspiration. Noel remained still, unable to break the contact between their eyes.

“Did you know that I was Commander Beaumont’s second wife?” she asked.

“Yes, I heard that.”

“The divorce was a difficult time for him. And for me, of course, but more so for him. But it passed for him; it will not pass for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m the intruder. The foreigner. A breaker of marriages. He has his work; he goes to sea. I live among those who don’t. The life of a naval officer’s wife is a lonely one in usual circumstances. It can become quite difficult when one is ostracized.”

“You must have known there’d be a degree of that.”

“Of course.”

“Well, if you knew it?…” He left the question suspended, not grasping the point.

“Why did I marry Commander Beaumont? Is that what you mean to ask?”

He did not want to ask
anything!
He was not interested in the intimate details of Gretchen Beaumont’s life. Geneva was all that mattered; the covenant, everything. But he needed her cooperation.

“I assume the reasons were emotional; that’s generally why people get married. I only meant that you might have taken steps to lessen the tension. You could live farther away from the naval base, have different friends.” He was rambling, awkwardly, a little desperately. He wanted only to break through her maddening reserve.

“My question’s more interesting. Why did I marry Beaumont?” Her voice floated again; it rose quietly in the air. “You’re right; it’s emotional. Quite basic.”

She touched his forehead again, her dress parting once more as she leaned forward, her lovely, naked breasts exposed again. Noel was tired and aroused and angry. He
had
to make her understand that her private concerns were meaningless beside Geneva! To do that, he had to make her like him; yet he could not touch her.

“Naturally it’s basic,” he said. “You love him.”

“I loathe him.”

Her hand was now inches from his face, her fingers a blur at the corner of his eyes—a blur because their eyes were locked; he dared not shift them. And he dared not touch her.

“Then why did you marry him? Why do you stay with him?”

“I told you. It’s basic Commander Beaumont has a little money; he’s a highly respected officer in the service of his government, a dull, uninteresting man more at home on a ship than anywhere else. All this adds up to a very quiet, very secure niche. I am in a comfortable cocoon.”

There was the lever! Geneva provided it. “Two million dollars could build a very secure cocoon, Mrs. Beaumont. A far better shelter than you have here.”

“Perhaps. But I would have to leave this one in order to build it. I’d have to go outside—”

“Only for a while.”

“And what would happen?” she continued, as if he had not interrupted. “Outside? Where I’d have to say yes or no. I don’t want to think about that; it would be so
difficult. You know, Mr. Holcroft, I’ve been unhappy most of my life, but I don’t look for sympathy.”

She was infuriating! He felt like slapping her. “I’d like to return to the situation in Geneva,” he said.

She settled back into the hassock, crossing her legs. The sheer dress rose above her knees, the soft flesh of her thigh revealed. The pose was seductive; her words were not.

“But I have returned to it,” she said. “Perhaps awkwardly, but I’m trying to explain. As a child I came out of Berlin. Always running, until my mother and my brother and I found a sanctuary in Brazil that proved to be a hell for us. I’ve floated through life these past years. I’ve followed—instincts, opportunities, men—but I’ve followed. I haven’t led. I’ve made as few decisions as possible.”

“I don’t understand.”

“If you have business that concerns my family, you’ll have to talk to my brother, Johann. He makes the decisions. He brought us out of South America after my mother died. He is the Von Tiebolt you must reach.”

Noel suppressed his desire to yell at her. Instead, he exhaled silently, a sense of weariness and frustration sweeping over him. Johann von Tiebolt was the one member of the family he had to avoid, but he could not tell Gretchen Beaumont why. “Where is he?” he asked rhetorically.

“I don’t know. He works for the
Guardian
newspaper, in Europe.”

“Where in Europe?”

“Again, I have no idea. He moves around a great deal.”

“I was told he was last seen in Bahrain.”

“Then you know more than I do.”

“You have a sister.”

“Helden. In Paris. Somewhere.”

All the children will be examined … decisions made
.

Johann had been examined and a judgment had been made—rightly or wrongly—that disqualified him from Geneva. He was a complication they could not afford; he would draw attention where none could be permitted. And this strange, beautiful woman on the hassock—even if she felt differently—would be rejected by Geneva as incompetent. It was as simple as that.

Paris. Helden von Tiebolt.

Absently, Noel reached for his cigarettes, his thoughts now on an unknown woman who worked as a translator for a publishing house in Paris. He was only vaguely aware of the movement in front of him, so complete was his concentration. Then he noticed and he stared at Gretchen Beaumont.

The commander’s wife had risen from the hassock and unfastened the buttons of her dress to the waist. Slowly, she parted the folds of silk. Her breasts were released; they sprang out at him, the nipples taut, stretched, swollen with tension. She raised her skirt with both her hands, bunching it above her thighs, and stood directly in front of him. He was aware of the fragrance that seemed to emanate from her—a delicate perfume with a sensuousness as provoking as the sight of her exposed flesh. She sat down beside him, her dress now above her waist, her body trembling. She moaned and reached for the back of his neck, drawing his face to hers, his lips to hers. Her mouth opened as she received his mouth; she sucked, breathing rapidly, her warm breath mixed with the juices that came from her throat. She put her hand on his trousers and groped for his penis … hard, soft, hard.
Harder
. She became suddenly uncontrollable; her moans were feverish. She pressed into him. Everywhere.

Her parted lips slid off his mouth and she whispered. “Tomorrow I go to the Mediterranean. To a man I loathe. Don’t say anything. Just give me tonight. Give me
tonight!
”

She moved away slightly, her mouth glistening, her eyes so wide they seemed manic. Slowly, she rose above him, her white skin everywhere. The trembling subsided. She slid a naked leg over his and got to her feet. She pulled his face into her waist and reached for his hand. He stood up, embracing her. She held his hand in hers, and together they walked toward the door of the bedroom. As they went inside, he heard the words, spoken in that eerie, echoing monotone.

“Johann said a man would come one day and talk of a strange arrangement. I was to be nice to him and remember everything he said.”

Holcroft awoke with a start, for several seconds not sure where he was; then he remembered. Gretchen Beaumont had led him into the bedroom with that incredible statement. He had tried to press her, tried to learn what else her brother had said, but she was in no state to answer clearly. She was in a frenzy, needing the sex desperately; she could concentrate on nothing else.

They had made love maniacally, she the aggressor, writhing on the bed at fever pitch, beneath him, above him, beside him. She’d been insatiable; no amount of exploration and penetration could gratify her. At one point she had screamed, clasping her legs around his waist, her fingers digging into his shoulders long after he was capable of response. And then his exhaustion had caught up with him. He’d fallen into a deep but troubled sleep.

Now he was awake, and he did not know what had interrupted that sleep. There’d been a noise, not loud, but sharp and penetrating, and he did not know what it was or where it came from.

Suddenly, he realized he was alone in the bed. He raised his head. The room was dark, the door closed, a dim line of light at the bottom.

“Gretchen?…” There was no reply; no one else was in the room.

He threw the covers off and got out of the bed, steadying his weakened legs, feeling drained, disoriented. He lurched for the door and yanked it open. Beyond, in the small living room, a single table lamp was on, its light casting shadows against the walls and the floor.

There was the noise again! A metallic sound that echoed throughout the house, but it did not come from inside the house. He ran to a living-room window and peered through the glass. Under the spill of a streetlamp
he could see the figure of a man standing by the hood of his rented car, a flashlight in his hand.

Before he knew what was happening, he heard a muffled voice from somewhere else outside, and the beam of light shot up at the window. At him. Instinctively, he pulled his hand up to shield his eyes. The light went out, and he saw the man race toward a car parked diagonally across the street. He had not noticed that car, his concentration so complete on his own and on the unknown man with the flashlight. Now he tried to focus on this automobile; there was a figure in the front seat. He could not distinguish anything but the outline of the head and shoulders.

The running man reached the door on the street side, pulled it open, and climbed in behind the wheel. The engine roared; the car shot forward, then skidded into a U-turn before it sped away.

Briefly, in the wash of light from the streetlamp, Noel saw the person in the seat next to the driver. For less than a second the face in the window was no more than twenty yards away, racing by.

It was Gretchen Beaumont. Her eyes stared ahead through the windshield, her head nodding as if she were talking rapidly.

Several lights went on in various houses across from the Beaumont residence. The roar of the engine and the screeching of the tires had been a sudden, unwelcome instrusion on the peaceful street in Portsea. Concerned faces appeared in the windows, peering outside.

Holcroft stepped back. He was naked, and he realized that being seen naked in Commander Beaumont’s living room in the middle of the night while Commander Beaumont was away would not be to anyone’s advantage, least of all his own.

Where had she gone? What was she doing? What was the sound he had heard?

There was no time to think about such things; he had to get away from the Beaumont house. He turned from the window and ran back to the bedroom, adjusting his eyes to the dim light, trying to find a light switch or a lamp. He remembered that in the frenzy of their love-making, Gretchen had swung her hand above his head into the shade of the bedside light, sending it to the floor. He knelt down, groping until he found it. It was on its
side, the bulb protected by the linen shade surrounding it. He snapped it on. Light filled the room, its spill washing up from the floor. There were elongated shadows and patches of darkness, but he could see his clothes draped over an armchair, his socks and shorts by the bed.

He stood up and dressed as rapidly as he could. Where was his jacket? He looked about, remembering vaguely that Gretchen had slipped it off his arms and dropped it near the door. Yes, there it was. He walked across the room toward it, glancing briefly at his reflection in the large mirror above the bureau.

He froze, his eyes riveted on a photograph in a silver frame on the bureau. It was of a man in naval uniform.

The
face
. He had seen it before. Not long ago. Weeks … days, perhaps. He was not sure where from, but he was certain he knew that face. He walked to the bureau and studied the photograph.

It was the eyebrows! They were odd, different; they stood out as an entity in themselves … like an incongruous cornice above an undefined tapestry. They were heavy, a thick profusion of black-and-white hair interwoven … salt and pepper. Eyes that blinked open suddenly, eyes that stared up at him. He remembered!

The plane to Rio de Janeiro! And something else. The face from that moment on the plane to Brazil prodded another memory—a memory of violence. But a blurred, racing figure was all he recalled.

Noel turned the silver frame over and clawed at the surface until he loosened the backing. He slid it out of the groove and removed the photograph. He saw minute indentations on the glossy surface; he turned it over. There was writing. He held it up to catch the light and, for a moment, stopped breathing. The words were German:
NEUAUFBAU ODER TOD.