The Rendezvous (23 page)

‘Like the one from Detroit yesterday, I suppose?' she said. ‘I listened in on the other line, darling. It didn't sound like medical talk to me.'

He looked at her with real contempt. ‘I didn't think you'd sink so low, Vera. You've no reason to check up on me.'

‘Thanks, I believe you,' she said. ‘Let's just say I'm curious, and you don't talk to me much these days. I've been in the dog house so long I feel like barking when you come in the door! What are these calls anyway? Don't try and tell me that man from Detroit was talking about a
patient
. Who's got away from whom?'

They'd lost him. That was the final report from Detroit yesterday, and he had just confirmed it with Hoffmeyer. When the commando squad got to Chicago, they were too late. Amstat's apartment was empty and no one knew when he left. He hadn't gone back to New York either. He had just vanished forty-eight hours ahead of them.

He and Vera had been married for eighteen years; she'd fallen out of love with him, refused to have children because he was a Jew and she hadn't been able to rise above the prejudice against his race. It had ruined their marriage and soured both of them in different ways. Perhaps the time had come for her to face just how very much a Jew he was.

‘A German war criminal,' he said. He put the paper down and sat back with his hands folded. ‘A man who had four thousand of my people murdered during the war. We've been hunting him for twenty years, and we thought we'd got him. But he was tipped off somehow. He's got away.' She was staring at him, trying to make sense of what he was saying.

‘War criminal – what war criminal? You're not making sense. What do you mean
we've
been hunting him?… Who's we, for God's sake?'

‘The Jewish people,' her husband said. ‘You heard about Adolf Eichmann, didn't you? I guess you did because you kept saying it was all so illegal to kidnap him like that …'

‘I said it was bringing up old sores,' she interrupted fiercely. ‘I said it was making a race issue when it was all over! And it was.'

‘Killing six million people is making a race issue too,' Joe Kaplan said. ‘We feel we have a right to do something about it. The Jews in Israel took up where all you Gentiles left off. We got Eichmann, and by God you'd be surprised how many more of those bastards have been picked off here and there. We're sick of just standing there until somebody decides to start something; building up out of the ashes, running from one country to the next with all we can carry on our backs. We've got a country now, and we're a people. And I'm a part of that people, Vera.'

‘You're an American Jew,' she said. ‘You've got about as much connection with those gangsters in Israel as I have. You're not making sense with this royal “we”.'

‘I work with the Israelis,' Joe Kaplan said. ‘I've worked with them for years, looking for guys like Eichmann. And I've found one, thanks to you, and now it looks as if we may have lost him. So you'll understand why I'm a little out of sorts?'

‘What do you mean?' she said it very slowly. ‘What do you mean thanks to me?'

‘You put me on to him. Karl Amstat. If it hadn't been for you, we'd never have suspected anything. But you were right, honey, right all the way. He was a German. He was a guy who murdered Jewish men, women and children, after they'd dug their own graves. And he's not going to get away with it. We'll find him. I promise you, we'll find him.'

She had moved backwards, still staring at him; she looked sick and white. ‘You,' she said. ‘You're mixed up in this? You're mixed up in kidnapping and killing people in cold blood – oh, Jesus God, what did I marry?' Her voice rose and then began to crack into tears. ‘What in God's name did I marry!'

The phone began to ring, and she stopped; she didn't move to answer, nor did he, and it went on ringing. When he left his chair and went over to pick it off the cradle, she made a noise like an animal at his approach and ran out of the room.

‘It's Bob,' the caller said. ‘Joe, you've got to come right over. Terese is missing.'

Bob Bradford knew his sister very well; when she invited herself back with him after they left the lawyer's office he didn't think it was because she wanted company or a drink. She had something on her mind, and he wondered with some impatience if it was another divorce. They sat opposite each other and talked trivialities, and after about ten minutes, he said, ‘Ruth! Come out with it, whatever it is!'

‘I was about to,' she said. ‘I gather Terese is away again?'

‘She's up at the house for the weekend. Why?'

He knew that grim jaw-line and the go-to-hell look in Ruth's blue eyes.

‘I've been trying not to interfere,' she said. ‘But the time has come, Bob dear, when you've got to face facts. She is not at the house; she's cheating on you.'

She put down her glass, and waited for the storm to break on her.

He waited too, deliberately. ‘Say that again, will you? I want to be sure before I throw you out of here. For good!'

‘You can lose your temper, if you like,' Ruth said. ‘You can say anything you like to me, but it's the truth. Terese is not at Boston. I've known this for some weeks, and I hoped you'd do something about it, but apparently you're just as blind as ever. Mrs. James hasn't seen her in three months. And there's talk going around; they haven't named a name to me yet, but any minute now.'

‘You're a liar, Ruth,' he said. ‘My wife has never done a dirty thing in her life. And I spoke to her the day before yesterday. At the house.'

‘Then it's the first time she's gone up,' his sister said. ‘She wasn't there the other times. Look, Bob, we're family. We love each other, and we've always stuck together. I wouldn't say something to hurt you unless I felt I absolutely had to! But you're a laughing stock, a fool, and, Christ, I just won't sit back and let it happen. I'm not making it up – she wasn't in Boston all the other times. Okay, she was a couple of days ago, but now where is she?'

‘In Boston,' he said. ‘Until tomorrow morning, as it happens. And just before I do tell you to get out, I'll prove it to you. I'll call her there.'

It was after speaking to the housekeeper that he put the call through to Joe Kaplan.

‘Why him?' Ruth asked. She had a very stiff drink in her hand and she was standing over him trying to make him take it. ‘Why Joe Kaplan?'

‘He's her doctor,' Bob said. ‘If something's gone wrong, he'll know what to do.'

‘He's a psychiatrist,' Ruth said. ‘What's he got to do with Terese? Are you telling me she's had some kind of a crack-up? What's been going on, Bob, for God's sake?'

‘There's an awful lot about Terese you don't know,' he said. He shook his head and pushed the drink away. ‘He said he'd be right round. Where the hell is he?'

‘I'm out of my depths, Robert,' she said. ‘What don't I know about her?'

‘That she worked for the Resistance in the war. She was captured and tortured by the Gestapo. I found her at Buchenwald, when we liberated the place. If you want details of what they did to her, I can give you those too! Joe pulled her out of it; she didn't lose her memory – it was blotted out on purpose to make her forget the way they held her under water in a bath-tub till she nearly drowned, and burned her and broke her fingers!' He looked up at her, his eyes sunken in his face, and they were the same fiery blue as her own. ‘My wife's not a spoilt little tramp like the rest of you. About the time you were on your first matrimonial junket with that creep Charleton, she was in Buchenwald! I hope,' he said angrily, ‘that you feel as small as you ought to, trying to blacken her to me!'

‘Why didn't you tell us?' Ruth went away from him; she began sipping the drink herself. The whole thing sounded unbelievably distasteful and horrifying. One read about these things. One didn't actually meet the people … they were all in D.P. camps or hospitals or something. Her mind whirled round and round trying to adjust to what she knew of the war and equate it with her brother's wife, with Mrs. Robert Bradford the Third. ‘Why didn't you tell us?' she repeated. She had a clear memory of her mother in the Boston drawing room, dressed for a reception at the Cabot Lodges', and the question answered itself.

‘Because I didn't want to see the look on your face I see now,' he said. ‘Because it was none of your bloody business. Joe! Thank God you've come! You know Ruth, my sister? What took you so long?'

‘I had a call to make on the way,' Joe Kaplan said. ‘Now tell me exactly what happened.'

‘I called home to speak to Terese, and the housekeeper said she'd left on Thursday morning. She was coming back here.' He hesitated, and then he said, ‘There was a man with her, Joe. They went off together. I think she's been kidnapped!'

‘Anyone the housekeeper knew?'

‘No. I asked that immediately, but she said he was a stranger. A foreigner; she said Terese called him Karl.'

Joe Kaplan looked from his friend to his sister, whom he knew only slightly. She looked as if she had smelled something bad under her chair. He took Hoffmeyer's envelope out of his pocket and threw it on the coffee table.

‘Before we go any further, Bob, I'm going to say I wish I didn't have to tell you this. But there's no way round it. Terese hasn't been kidnapped, and there's only one Karl she'd go off with. Karl Amstat.'

‘I said she was cheating!'

Ruth burst out with it; her face had begun to redden at the vulgarity of the whole business, the housekeeper's astonishment when her brother called, the whole shoddy mismanagement of the affair. ‘I said she was a cheat and I was right.'

‘Perhaps.' She didn't like the Jewish doctor's tone. ‘But this is rather different to the usual all-American roll in the hay. Bob, before you read this stuff, I'll make it easy for you. Karl Amstat's real name is Alfred Brunnerman. That's who Terese has gone away with – and they're just two jumps ahead of the Israelis. While you read through this, I'd like to call Julia Adams and ask her to come over. She lived with that bastard for two years – she may know something about him that might give us a clue where they've headed.'

Julia was in watching television when the call came; she spent most evenings at home since Karl left her, not because she was allowing herself to mope or recriminate, but because she hadn't any enthusiasm for going out and starting with someone else. Not for a while, she decided. Amstat had meant more to her than she had known, much more than a man she liked going to bed with and would gladly have married, because this had been true of her two husbands and numerous boy friends in between. It was more than that with this one; she was intelligent enough to suspect that it had its root in his command of the situation; this was what had made the novelty for her. The partnership had never been equal, either in bed or out of it, and this was something she felt she wouldn't easily find again within their circle. Joe didn't say what he wanted; he just said it was urgent, and he couldn't talk on the phone, so would she please come over to Bob Bradford's apartment as soon as possible. There was silence when she walked into the room; Bob was sitting hunched in a chair; he looked up when she came in and it seemed to be an effort for him to get up. Ruth was standing, and there were two patches of high colour on her cheeks, like misplaced rouge on a grotesquely pale face. Only Joe Kaplan seemed normal, but more serious than usual.

‘Well, hello, everyone,' she said. ‘Who's died? Oh God!' her tone dropped suddenly. ‘Bob, darling, what have I said?'

‘Nobody's died, Julia,' Ruth answered her. ‘We're just a little shocked, that's all. I think you will be too.'

‘Sit down,' Joe said. ‘I'm sorry we had to drag you out like this, but something's come up. I'll explain it to you.' She looked at the three of them, and sat down. It was Joe who offered her a cigarette. He turned to Bradford.

Do you mind if I tell her, Bob?'

‘No, no,' Bob said. ‘You go right ahead, Joe. If there's anything Julia can tell us, it might help. I've got to find her.'

‘Terese has run off with Karl,' Joe said. ‘I know you're not surprised, Julia, but it's more complicated than it seems. We have to go back a way, quite a long way, to the war. Terese worked for the French Resistance; in the course of that work she was caught by the Gestapo and questioned by one of their officers. A – relationship developed between them – it's too long to go into the hows and whys right now, but it did, and it was highly emotional. I think I could say this particular guy went too easy on her for personal reasons.…'

‘Why not say they fell in love?' Julia said. ‘It could happen, even to a German, I guess?'

‘Possibly,' Joe said. ‘It didn't save Terese from being ill-treated by other Gestapo, and when Bob found her she was in a concentration camp and a pretty sick girl. I treated her there, and I made her an amnesiac because I felt it was her only chance to start again. Bob married her, and we made up the story about the air raid, and all the rest of it.'

‘But why?' Julia looked from one face to the other. ‘Why the lies? For Pete's sake, she was a heroine. What were you both hiding up?'

‘You see, Ruth,' Bob spoke for the first time, ‘everyone doesn't think of it like you. Thank you, Julia, for what you've said. Unfortunately, my family doesn't equate the kind of experience my wife went through with taking one's proper place in good American society – whatever the hell that's supposed to mean!'

‘There was another reason,' Joe interrupted. ‘The real reason, Bob. Be fair to Ruth and your family. We didn't want anyone asking questions which might have jolted Terese's memory. We didn't want it to come back.'