The Icon (27 page)

Then Jan was backing off, not down the lane but up the garden path, his free hand held close to his chest, as if ready to reach inside his jacket, but not doing so. The other man shifted closer to the pistol, even stretched his hand out, but made an equal show of doing no more.

“Ms. Kessler,” Jan said. “I’m sorry to see our business concluded this way. Please keep an open mind. And be careful of this man, he is clearly dangerous. In fact, I will wait a bit if you would like to leave now unhindered.”

How nice of both of them to worry so much about her.

“I think you better go, Jan. Before something worse happens.”

“Very well.” He smiled at her. “Do take care.”

He did not go right, into the garden, but continued up the path and through an archway in the brick wall that Ana had not even realized was there. Vanished, God knew where.

The bearded one was on his feet with the gun instantly, staring long at the archway, then all around them, ignoring Ana.

“You’re bleeding pretty badly,” she said.

He glanced at his soaked sleeve and nodded.

“Stupid. I didn’t know he would be so quick.”

“Were you trying to kill him?”

“No. That would have been easy, he was completely focused on you. I was trying to take him, but he was too fast. Lucky he didn’t kill me. I’m Benny, by the way. Sorry about this.”

He still barely looked at her. She realized that she should fear him, but did not, whether from instinct or from emotional exhaustion, she couldn’t say.

“Did Matthew really send you?”

“No, his grandfather, but on Matthew’s behalf. I guess the boy loves you or something.”

Ana felt dizzy, then nauseated. The shock hitting her, no doubt. She wanted to sit down on the pavement and cry.

“We should go,” Benny advised. “We can get a cab at a Hundred-tenth.”

“Where are we going?”

“To a hospital, first. Then someplace where we can keep you safe. You’ve stirred up some unfortunate interest.”

T
he platform was emptier than he would have liked. Matthew made it a point not to take the subway late at night, but getting a cab near Grand Central had become impossible, and his feet naturally guided him down the long staircase and through the turnstile. A smattering of people were on the upper level, coming up from the trains or heading west down the wide passage to the Times Square shuttle. He descended to the uptown platform, to find almost no one there. Just a very large homeless man in a filthy red bandanna, muttering to himself. Anxious and sleep-deprived, Matthew wandered north along the dirty concrete.

You must cure yourself.

He had let everything go for days now but the all-consuming chase. Thoughts of his father and Ana had broken through, but not sufficiently to distract him. He had not checked his answering machine until getting back from Greece, and he was stung to find two messages from his mother, angry that he had not called. There was one from Ana also. She was doing some research; they could compare notes when he returned. There was no warmth in her words—she was all business—but he took comfort in the fact that she had called at all. He went straight to his parents’ house, before even going to his apartment, and tried her from there this morning, but there was no answer.

Despite his mother’s protests to the contrary, his father looked stronger. He had more color and energy, and felt good enough to give Matthew hell about vanishing. The visit had been tense, but they both felt better by the end of it. Needing to be at work the next day, without fail, Matthew had taken the train back into the city after dinner. His body clock, which had barely adjusted to Greek time, had not yet reset for New York, and exhaustion, combined with travel and emotional stress, had kicked him into a strange, nearly surreal state. His eyes drooped, but his heart hammered. A certain color, or the shape of a face, would leap out at him from the blurry details of a crowd. He needed sleep badly.

A bunch of kids with an angry boom box shuffled down the steps, posing and cursing in their droopy jeans and baseball caps, displaying all the artificial, late-night animation of intoxicated young men. Matthew moved away from them. From far down the tunnel came the sound of the number six train.

You must cure yourself.

He almost felt he had. Those haunting eyes, that layered mystery, had been left somewhere behind, in some dream life he’d briefly passed through. The icon was not in Greece, he knew, yet he felt he had left it back there. It was part of that culture; its beauty and otherness had no place in this city without history. Past and present fused in Salonika. The past was crushed by New York, even the personal past, his own past. It was lost, left somewhere on a baggage carousel. It had never happened to him. Such magic did not exist.

His mind whirling, he sat down on a wooden bench to still himself. These were fatigue thoughts, delusional riffs from a traumatized brain. He could not get his hands around them. He was trying to free himself from an emotional condition by force of will, and in this delicate and overreceptive state of mind he almost believed he had succeeded. But it was white noise, sound and fury, meaningless. It would all be clearer in the morning.

He glanced up, and a huge figure loomed over him.

“Jesus knows your sins. You can’t lie to him.”

Matthew flinched, knocking his bruised spine against the bench. Mad, bloodshot eyes stared through him and body stink stunned his senses. The mutterer had become a shouter.

“I’m sure you’re right.”

“Your Father knows when you’re lying. He sees into your heart.”

A roar filled the station now, the uptown local hurtling out of the tunnel. There was no getting past the homeless evangelist in any conventional way, so Matthew swung his feet over the low bench back, and staggered across the gum-sticky platform to the yellow line. Reflected light climbed the broken white wall tiles, then the square front of the train rushed by him. The preacher’s voice bellowed from behind.

“He has spoken to me of you. You are one of the lost ones. Your sins are deep, but in Jesus all things are possible. Repent, and be one with the Lord.”

Several silver cars swept by, scratched windows, fluorescent light, very few people in the orange seats. The train slowed and Matthew’s eyes locked with those of a figure, or maybe a face only in a door window, quickly gone. Wide eyes of the deepest brown, alarmed or saddened, half the face discolored. There and gone in a moment, but Matthew’s body was electrified to his fingertips. He had seen that face before, those eyes. In a dream, perhaps.

The train stopped and a door opened before him. He stepped through but did not sit, looking back at the platform. The homeless giant was still by the bench, no longer looking at Matthew, muttering once more. Somehow his familiar insanity seemed less threatening than the face in the window, and Matthew had nearly decided to step off again when the doors closed and the train lurched forward. He grabbed a pole to avoid falling.

There was nobody in the car, and there were only two old women in the one ahead. Matthew held the steel pole fiercely, gazing down a vanishing series of windows in the doors connecting the cars, waiting for the specter to reappear. Or some new threat. He regretted all of it now—every incident and decision that had drawn him deeper into this bloodstained chase and further from his dull, comfortable life. Let him go back to worrying about staff politics, or some troubled girlfriend. He could not take this enervating obsession, this fear, this miserable paranoia. Nothing had happened. He had, perhaps, seen a face. He had been harassed by a homeless man. So what? Every encounter had become heavy with hidden meaning.

A few others got off with him at Seventy-seventh Street. Matthew rushed up the stairs and into the streetlit night as if pursued by demons. Lexington Avenue, lined with florists, coffee shops, and copiers, was dead at one o’clock in the morning. A banging grate beneath his feet startled him; a cab turning onto Eightieth Street nearly ran him down. The empty side streets were worse. It had been a warm day, but he felt chilled. Perhaps he was sick. Restaurants and twenty-four-hour delis created more human traffic on Second Avenue, and he relaxed somewhat. Entering his building, he dropped his keys on the black-and-white tiles, picked them up quickly and dropped them again, cursing loudly in the echoing stairwell. Waking the neighbors, if any of them were home. He barely knew the other people in the building. There was no one here he would go to for help.

Two flights up, he turned both locks and stepped into his cramped kitchen. It took him several seconds to realize that something was wrong. There were lights on. Then he heard movement somewhere, the quietest shuffle of feet, a creaking floorboard. He was looking about for something to use as a weapon when she called to him.

“Matthew.”

Ana appeared in the bedroom doorway, looking the way he felt. Her hair was wild, dark shadows hung under her eyes, her clothes appeared slept in. He thought she looked beautiful.

“How did you get in?”

“Benny let me in.”

“Benny.”

“Ezraki. Don’t tell me that you don’t know Benny.”

The name came back to him. An Israeli friend of his grandfather, did marketing research or something. Ex-Mossad, as if any of them were really ex-anything.

“Yeah, I know him. But I never gave him my keys.”

“He’s got this big set of skeleton keys, says he can open eighty percent of the ordinary locks in the city.”

“That’s comforting. Why did he bring you here?”

“I got myself into some trouble.” She tried to sound flip, but her voice broke. “He didn’t think I should go back to my place right away.”

Matthew turned swiftly to bolt the useless locks, and turned back just as she rushed into him, knocking her forehead against his chin.

“Sorry.”

“It’s OK.”

He held her for several minutes, arms wrapped tightly, fingers digging into her ribs. Strange to feel such comfort, to be able to give such comfort in the midst of such distress. He had not expected to hold her again. His mind had been packed with all the explanations, justifications, pleas with which he might win back her trust, all of them insufficient and unconvincing even to his own ears. Yet here she was. No explanations, no excuses. Warm breath on his neck, the aloe scent of her shampoo.

“I feel so stupid,” she said into his collar. “And frightened.”

“Tell me what happened.”

She released him slowly, sat down at the little kitchen table. He boiled water for tea they would not drink while she told him of Rosenthal, del Carros, and the encounter at the cathedral. By the time he told her of his misadventures in Greece it was three o’clock in the morning. He held her hands across the table, shaking from fatigue.

“I can’t believe you went hunting for that guy after the speech you gave me last week.”

“I assumed he was just some old collector,” she answered. “It didn’t seem dangerous. I thought I might learn a few things.”

“You did that, all right,” he laughed.

“Well, I was told some things, anyway. You have to consider the source. Then I had to open my big mouth, pretend to know secrets. I wonder if they’ll come looking for me.”

“I doubt it. Now that they know people are protecting you.”

“Maybe they believe I know where the icon is.”

“What does Benny think?”

“What you said. They were willing to grab me while they had the chance, but they won’t try again. They just want the icon. I can’t get that fucking thing out of my life even when I give it away.”

That’s because you let me
into
your life, he almost answered, but thought better of it. They were silent for some moments.

“So they’re gone, right?” Ana spoke again. “The icon, and your godfather.”

“It looks that way. Actually, I have a wild guess where he is.”

“Really, where? No, don’t tell me.”

“I have no intention of telling you. In fact, I’m trying hard to let all this go.”

She squeezed his hands firmly.

“That’s exactly what we need to do.”

“I’m so tired.”

“You should sleep. I can go now.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m sure it’s safe. You need time to get your head together.”

“You’re not going anywhere. You are not leaving my sight.”

“OK.” She smiled at him. “But I’m not sure I can sleep. I’m afraid I’ll have nightmares of people chasing me.”

“I felt like someone was chasing me tonight.”

“When?”

“Earlier. In the subway, all the way home. Don’t worry, it wasn’t anyone. Just paranoia, but it really felt like someone, or something, was after me.”

“This thing is eating you alive. Please tell me you’ll let it go.”

“I will,” he said, in a tone that sounded convincing even to himself. “I have to, I’m not cut out for this.”

She came around the table and held him again. “Promise me.”

“I promise myself. I want out.” He closed his eyes. “I just pray that they leave us alone.”

“It could have been him. It could very well have been him.”

They had retreated from the coffee shop to the car so that Benny could smoke. In any case, it afforded a better view of Matthew’s street. Neither the boy nor Ana had emerged yet, which Andreas took as a likely sign of reconciliation.

“But you can’t be sure,” said Andreas.

“How can I be sure?” Benny slammed his door and lit up immediately. A heavy white bandage covered his left forearm and made some actions clumsy. “I’ve never seen him, just photographs. All old men look alike.”

“So what makes you think it might be him?”

“The face was close enough. And he would have someone like that Dutchman around him. Why does a simple collector need someone like that?”

“He is no simple collector. A dangerous man, certainly. That doesn’t mean he’s Müller.”

“The Kessler woman thinks he is.”

“What are her reasons?”

“Female intuition? I don’t know; she was too shaken for me to debrief her properly. But apparently he admitted seeing the icon years before. More than seeing it. She had the impression that he had spent time with it, maybe owned it. Then, when he was about to get rid of her, she accused him of stealing it. Just to get a reaction.”

“Which she did, it would seem.”

“Oh, yes. His interest in continuing the conversation grew immeasurably after that. He managed to frighten her out of her wits. I can only assume that she had done the same to him, somehow.”

“I didn’t realize she even knew Müller existed.”

“She may not, by name, anyway. But she isn’t stupid, she’s heard rumors. Her grandfather got the icon as loot from a Nazi officer. She doesn’t have to know his name to guess that this might be the guy.”

“Of course. Damned foolish of her to taunt him with that.”

“She didn’t know what she was dealing with.”

“It’s good you were there.”

“It’s good that you put me on to watching her. Now we may have Müller in our sights again. Then all of us doubters will owe you an apology.” Benny shook his head in a bemused fashion, sucking on his cigarette. There was a look in the big man’s dark eyes that made Andreas uncomfortable.

“You would have executed him,” Andreas stated, more than asked. “Right there in the church. If you could have been sure it was Müller.”

“What should I care for churches? That place is more like a museum, anyway.”

“So the answer is yes.”

“If I could have been certain, why not? It would have been risky. I would have had to take out the Dutchman as well, and there were a lot of people around. Then again, how many opportunities can one expect?”

“This recklessness of yours is disturbing. You make me question involving you.”

“What recklessness?” Benny barked smoke into the old man’s face. “It’s all been talk so far. Raiding empty rooms. Bad information. The only reckless thing I’ve done is get that girl out of danger.”

“Forgive me, you did well there. It is only that I take you at your word, and your words have been disturbing.”

“I don’t know why. We both know the man needs to die. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because I lost him and who the hell knows if we’ll ever find him again.”