The Holcroft Covenant (24 page)

“She was a survivor. She fled Germany with nothing but a few pieces of jewelry, two children, and a baby inside her. She had no training, no skills, no profession, but she could work, and she was … convincing. She
started selling in dress shops, cultivated customers, used her flair for clothes—and she had that—as the basis for her own business. Several businesses, actually. Our home in Rio de Janeiro was quite comfortable.”

“Your sister told me it was … a sanctuary that turned into a kind of hell.”

“My sister is given to melodramatics. It wasn’t so bad. If we were looked down upon, there was a certain basis for it.”

“What was that?”

“My mother was terribly attractive.…”

“So are her daughters,” interrupted Noel.

“I imagine we are,” said Helden matter-of-factly. “It’s never concerned me. I haven’t had to use it—whatever attractiveness I may have. But my mother did.”

“In Rio?”

“Yes. She was kept by several men.…
We
were kept, actually. There were two or three divorces, but she wouldn’t marry the husbands involved. She broke up marriages, extracting money and business interests as she did. When she died, we were quite well off. The German community considered her a pariah. And, by extension, her children.”

“She sounds fascinating,” said Holcroft, smiling. “How did she die?”

“She was killed. Shot through the head while she was driving one night.”

The smile faded abruptly. Images returned: a deserted lookout high above the city of Rio; the sounds of gunfire and the explosions of cement; the shattering of glass.…
Glass
. A car window blown out with the spit of silenced gunshot; a heavy black pistol leveled at his head.…

Then the words came back to him, spoken in the booth of a cocktail lounge. Words Holcroft had believed were ridiculous, the products of unreasonable fear.

The Cararras, brother and sister. The sister, dearest friend and fiancée of Johann von Tiebolt.

He and my sister were to be married. The Germans would not permit it
.

Who could stop them?

Any number of men. With a bullet in the back of Johann’s head
.

The Cararras. Dear friends and supplicants for the
ostracized Von Tiebolts. It suddenly struck Noel that if Helden knew how the Cararras had helped him, she might be more cooperative. The Cararras had risked their lives to send him to the Von Tiebolts. She would have to respond to that confidence with her own.

“I think I should tell you,” he said. “In Rio it was the Cararras who contacted me. They told me where to start looking for you. They were the ones who told me your new name was Tennyson.”

“Who?”

“Your friends, the Cararras. Your brother’s fiancée.”

“The Cararras? In Rio de Janeiro?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve never heard of them. I don’t know any Cararras.”

The tactic blew up in his face with the impact of a backfired rifle. Suddenly Helden was wary of him, apprehensive of saying anything further about her family.

Who were the Cararras?

Why had they told him things that were not true?

Who sent them to him? Her brother had no fiancée, nor any best friend whom she could recall.

He did not claim to understand; he could only speculate as truthfully as possible. No one else had come forward. For reasons known only to them, the Cararras had created a relationship that did not exist; still, it made no sense to call them enemies of the Von Tiebolts. They had reached him for the purpose of
helping
the two sisters and the brother who had been driven from Brazil. There were those in Rio—a powerful man named Graff, for one—who would pay a great deal of money to locate the Von Tiebolts. The Cararras, who had much to gain and very little to lose, had not told him.

“They wanted to help,” Noel said. “They weren’t lying about that. They said you’d been persecuted; they did want to help you.”

“It’s possible,” said Helden. “Rio is filled with people who are still fighting the war, still hunting for those they call traitors. One is never sure who is a friend and who is an enemy. Not among the Germans.”

“Did you know Maurice Graff?”

“I knew who he was, of course. Everyone did. I never met him.”

“I did,” Noel said. “
He
called the Von Tiebolts traitors.”

“I’m sure he did. We were pariahs, but not in the nationalistic sense.”

“What sense, then?”

The girl looked away again, lifting the brandy glass to her ups. “Other things.”

“Your mother?”

“Yes,” replied Helden. “It was my mother. I told you, the German community despised her.”

Again Holcroft had the feeling she was telling him only part of the truth. He would not pursue it now. If he gained her confidence, she would tell him later. She
had
to tell him; whatever it was might have an affect on Geneva. Everything affected Geneva now.

“You said your mother broke up marriages,” he said. “Your sister used almost the same words about herself. She said she was shunned by the officers and their wives in Portsmouth.”

“If you’re looking for a pattern, I won’t try to dissuade you. My sister is quite a bit older than I. She was closer to my mother, watched her progress, saw the advantages that came mother’s way. It wasn’t as if she was oblivious of such things. She knew the horror of Berlin after the war. At the age of thirteen she slept with soldiers for food. American soldiers, Mr. Holcroft.”

It was all he had to know about Gretchen Beaumont. The picture was complete. A whore, for whatever reasons, at fourteen. A whore—for whatever other reasons—at forty-five-plus. The bank’s directors in Geneva would rule her out on grounds of instability and incompetence.

But Noel knew there were stronger grounds. The man Gretchen Beaumont said she loathed, but lived with. A man with odd, heavy eyebrows who had followed him to Brazil.

“What about her husband?”

“I barely know him.”

She looked away again at the fire. She was frightened; she
was
hiding something. Her words were too studiedly nonchalant. Whatever it was she would not talk about had something to do with Beaumont. There was no point in evading the subject any longer. Truth between them had to be a two-way matter; the sooner she learned that, the better for both of them.

“Do you know anything about him? Where he came from? What he does in the navy?”

“No, nothing. He’s a commander on a ship; that’s all I know.”

“I think he’s more than that, and I think you know it. Please don’t lie to me.”

At first, her eyes flashed with anger; then, just as rapidly, the anger subsided. “That’s a strange thing to say. Why would I lie to you?”

“I wish I knew. You say you barely know him, but you seem scared to death.
Please.
”

“What are you driving at?”

“If you know something, tell me. If you’ve heard about the document in Geneva, tell me what you’ve heard.”

“I know nothing. I’ve heard nothing.”

“I saw Beaumont two weeks ago on a plane to Rio. The same plane I took from New York. He was following me.”

He could see fear in Helden’s eyes. “I think you’re wrong,” she said.

“I’m not. I saw his photograph in your sister’s house. His house. It was the same man. I stole that photograph and it was stolen from me. After someone beat the
hell
out of me for it.”

“Good
lord
.… You were beaten for his
photograph?
”

“Nothing else was missing. Not my wallet or my money or my watch. Just his picture. There was writing on the back of it.”

“What did it say?”

“I don’t know. It was in German, and I can’t read German.”

“Can you remember any of the words?”

“One, I think. The last word. T-O-D.
Tod.
”

“
 ‘Ohne dich sterbe ich.’
Could that be it?”

“I don’t know. What does it mean?”

“ ‘Without you I die.’ It’s the sort of thing my sister would think of. I told you, she’s melodramatic.” She was lying again; he knew it!

“An endearment?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what the British said, and I didn’t believe them either. Beaumont was on that plane. That picture was taken from me because there was some kind of message on it. For Christ’s sake, what’s going
on?
”

“I don’t know!”

“But you know
something.
” Noel tried to control himself. Their voices were low, almost whispers, but their
argument carried over to the other diners. Holcroft reached across the table and covered her hand. “I’m asking you again. You know something. Tell me.”

He could feel a slight tremble in her hand. “What I know is so confusing it would be meaningless. It’s more what I sense than what I know, really.” She took her hand from his. “A number of years ago Anthony Beaumont was a naval attaché in Rio de Janeiro. I didn’t know him well, but I remember him coming to the house quite often. He was married at the time, but interested in my sister—a diversion, I suppose you might call it. My mother encouraged it. He was a high-ranking naval officer; favors could be had. But my sister argued violently with my mother. She despised Beaumont and would have nothing to do with him. Yet only a few years later we moved to England and she married him. I’ve never understood.”

Noel leaned forward, relieved. “It may not be as difficult to understand as you think. She told me she married him for the security he could give her.”

“And you believed her?”

“Her behavior would seem to confirm what she said.”

“Then I can’t believe you met my sister.”

“She was your sister. You look alike: both beautiful.”

“It’s my turn to ask you a question. Given that beauty, do you really think she would settle for a naval officer’s salary and the restricted life of a naval officer’s wife? I can’t. I never have.”

“What do you think, then?”

“I think she was forced to marry Anthony Beaumont.”

Noel leaned back in the chair. If she was right, the connection was in Rio de Janeiro. With her mother, perhaps. With her mother’s murder.

“How could Beaumont force her to marry him? And why?”

“I’ve asked myself both questions a hundred times. I don’t know.”

“Have you asked her?”

“She refuses to talk to me.”

“What happened to your mother in Rio?”

“I told you: She manipulated men for money. The Germans despised her, called her immoral. Looking back, it’s hard to refute.”

“Was that why she was shot?”

“I guess so. No one really knows; the killer was never found.”

“But it could be the answer to the first question, couldn’t it? Isn’t it possible that Beaumont knew something about your mother that was so damaging he could blackmail your sister?”

Helden turned her palms up in front of her. “What could possibly
be
so damaging? Accepting everything that was said about my mother as being true, why would it have any effect on Gretchen?”

“That would depend on what it was.”

“There’s nothing conceivable. She’s in England now. She’s her own person, thousands of miles away. Why should she be concerned?”

“I have no idea.” Then Noel remembered. “You used the words ‘children of hell.’ Damned for what you were, and damned for what you weren’t. Couldn’t that apply to your sister as well?”

“Beaumont isn’t interested in such things. It’s an entirely different matter.”

“Is it? You don’t know that. It’s your opinion he forced her to marry him. If it isn’t something like that, what is it?”

Helden looked away, deep in thought now, not in a lie. “Something much more recent.”

“The document in Geneva?” he asked. Manfredi’s warning repeated in his ears, the specter of Wolfsschanze in his mind.

“How did Gretchen react when you told her about Geneva?” asked Helden.

“As if it didn’t matter.”

“Well?…”

“It could have been a diversion. She was too casual—just as you were too casual when I mentioned Beaumont a few minutes ago. She could have expected it and steeled herself.”

“You’re guessing.”

It was the moment, thought Noel. It would be in her eyes—the rest of the truth she would not talk about. Did it come down to Johann von Tiebolt?

“Not really guessing. Your sister said that her brother told her a man would ‘come one day and talk of a strange arrangement.’ Those were her words.”

Whatever he was looking for—a flicker of recognition, a blink of fear—it was not there. There was
something
, but nothing he could relate to. She looked at him as if she herself were trying to understand. Yet there was a fundamental innocence in her look, and that was what
he
could not understand.

“ ‘A man would come one day.’ It doesn’t make sense,” she said.

“Tell me about your brother.”

She did not answer for several moments. Instead, her eyes strayed to the red tablecloth; her lips parted in astonishment. Then, as if she were coming out of a trance, she said, “Johann? What’s there to say?”

“Your sister told me he got the three of you out of Brazil. Was it difficult?”

“There were problems. We had no passports, and there were men who tried to stop us from obtaining them.”

“You were immigrants. At least, your mother, brother, and sister were. They had to have papers.”

“Whatever papers there were in those days were burned as soon as they served their purpose.”

“Who wanted to stop you from leaving Brazil?”

“Men who wanted to bring Johann to trial.”

“For what?”

“After mother was killed, Johann took over her business interests. She never allowed him to do much when she was alive. Many people thought he was ruthless, even dishonest. He was accused of misrepresenting profits, withholding taxes. I don’t think any of it was true; he was simply faster and brighter than anyone else.”

“I see,” said Noel, recalling MI-Five’s evaluation—“overachiever.” “How did he avoid the courts and get you out?”

“Money. And all-night meetings in strange places with men he never identified. He came home one morning and told Gretchen and me to pack just enough things for a short overnight trip. We drove to the airport and were flown in a small plane to Recife, where a man met us. We were given passports; the name on them was Tennyson. The next thing Gretchen and I knew we were on a plane for London.”