Дональд Уэстлейк - Forever and a Death

“I’m here in Brisbane now,” Curtis went on, “where I just discovered this thievery, and I’m sorry, Robert, but I have no choice but to go to the police.”

“Perfectly understandable,” Bendix assured him. “Unfortunate, of course, but I quite see where you have no alternative.”

“None. It will probably mean, as well, that I’ll be forced to say some unpleasant things about you in the press.”

“Speaking of swine,” Bendix said. “Well, I’ve been spoken of unkindly before.”

“I’m sure you have.”

“Now, you know, Richard,” Bendix said, “I’m certainly not going to admit to having encouraged this fellow.”

“No, of course not.”

“However,” Bendix said, “I suppose I could manage not to deny it very forcefully either. I’m rather good, in fact, at being coy.”

Curtis laughed. “I’m sure you are. I’d like to watch some time.”

“Never. How’s Brisbane?”

“Warm. How’s Geneva?”

“Cold. Nice talking to you.”

“And you, Robert.” Curtis broke the connection, then dialed the hotel operator: “Police headquarters, please.”

Luther walked into their cabin and Jerry was still seated there, crosslegged on his bunk, gazing moodily at nothing at all.

“We’re there, Jerry,” he said. “Come outside and watch.”

Jerry came back from far away, and gave Luther a bleak look. Sighing, he said, “I’m dreading this, Luther.”

“The parents, you mean.”

“Of course the parents.”

“Well,” Luther said, “brooding in here isn’t going to get it over with any faster. Come out on deck, look at the world.”

“The world,” Jerry said, as though repelled by the idea, but he did obediently get up from his bunk and follow Luther out of the cabin. The two went single file down the narrow corridor and up the ladder to the foredeck.

Planetwatch III had already rounded South Head and was well into the harbor waters called Port Jackson, surrounded by the hugely sprawling city of Sydney. Ahead soared the perfect arch of Sydney Harbour Bridge, uniting the two halves of the city, while just this side of it and to its left sat poised the Opera House, that great gleaming white bird with folded wings.

Usually Jerry both enjoyed this view and was appalled by it, the great spread of massive buildings up the hillslopes from gleaming beaches both beautiful in themselves and horrible in their implications of massive environmental damage. He could dwell endlessly on the contradictions as their little ship steamed slowly westward into the harbor.

But not today. Today, Jerry saw nothing, because out there in front of him, somewhere in all that muscular teeming space, were Kim Baldur’s mother and father.

Of course they’d been told, as soon as possible. Two days ago Kim had gone over the side and disappeared, most certainly dead. As soon as Planetwatch III had gotten out of range of those deadly waves, Jerry had radioed to the Planetwatch office here in Sydney to report what had happened, and they in turn had notified the main Planetwatch headquarters in Seattle, who had informed Mr. and Mrs. Baldur in Chicago. Who had immediately flown here, and had been waiting for the slow-moving Planetwatch III since last night.

It was Jerry’s responsibility. It was his responsibility that Kim had done that rash thing, that foolish thing, thinking he would want her to do it, and so it was his responsibility to face the parents, answer their questions, accept whatever blame they wanted to put on him.

Today. Now. In that city, closing around him as the ship turned to port to enter Woolloomooloo Bay, closing around him like the gleaming white teeth in the jaws of the world’s most massive shark.

Planetwatch maintained a storefront office on George Street in The Rocks, a lesser tourist and shopping area overlooking Sydney Cove. Amid the restraint of the restored 19th-century buildings of the neighborhood, Planetwatch’s shop window of color photographs of ecological horrors blown up to gargantuan scale struck a strident note that only Planetwatch’s supporters couldn’t see.

It was in the conference room behind the store area that Jerry and Captain Cousseran, along with three local Planetwatch volunteers, met the parents, all of them seated on the uncomfortable green vinyl chairs around the free-form cream-colored Formica coffee table under the fluorescent ceiling lights, in the conversation area away from the main long rectangular conference table. Michael Baldur was a large man in his mid-fifties, with large jowls and black-framed eyeglasses and thinning gray hair; he was dressed in the same discreetly expensive dark blue pinstripe suit and white shirt and dark figured tie he would wear to his executive’s office in a large merchant bank in Chicago’s Loop. Kristin Baldur was a tiny woman who tried not to look as though she were in her late forties. Her medium-length ash blonde hair was carefully informal, her makeup insistently discreet, her Hermès scarf casually but perfectly draped over her padded shoulders. She had clearly been a beauty in her youth, of a delicate and more powerful sort than her healthily attractive daughter.

After awkward introductions, after a general refusal of an offer of coffee from one of the volunteers, after an uncomfortable pause, Jerry blurted out, “I want you to know, I feel horrible.”

They looked at him mildly, as though they didn’t know it was his fault, as though they thought he were just being conventionally sympathetic. Kristin Baldur even managed a polite smile as she said, “It must have been a terrible shock for you. All of you, on the ship.”

“It was,” Captain Cousseran said.

“We’ve been told,” Michael Baldur said, “she was volunteering in some way. I don’t entirely understand it.”

Jerry closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. This was the moment. Opening his eyes, he said, “She did it because she thought I wanted her to.”

Now they looked at him more closely. The father said. “Did you want her to?”

“No!”

Captain Cousseran, in the chair to Jerry’s right, said, “There was no warning. She told no one, asked no questions, merely leaped into the sea.”

Jerry wasn’t about to let himself be let off the hook that easily. Turning to the captain, he said, “But she heard me say there had to be a fail-safe. You know she did. She heard me say it was going to be safe, that’s why she went ahead.”

Captain Cousseran could be stubborn when he wanted. Shaking his head, setting his jaw, he said, “She went without warning, without discussion.”

Michael Baldur said, “My daughter was an impulsive girl, I know that.”

“But she wouldn’t have gone,” Jerry insisted, “if she hadn’t listened to me.”

Kristin Baldur smiled sadly at Jerry, and said, “Kim didn’t really listen to you, Mr. Diedrich. She would always jump first, and think about it afterwards. I don’t think she ever really understood the idea of personal danger. I was always afraid that, some time...”

Michael Baldur reached over to grip his wife’s forearm. Her smile had become fixed, her large eyes brighter.

Captain Cousseran broke through the moment, saying, “My regret is that we were unable to look for her ourselves. There was no question, of course. Still, it should have been our job to look for her and, if possible, find her.”

Michael Baldur said, “That’s something else I don’t entirely understand. Why didn’t you stay to help search?”

“We were trespassing,” Captain Cousseran told him. “We had been ordered away, and we had no choice but to obey. The other ship lowered two launches to study the island after the explosions, and to look for the — for your daughter. Captain Zhang assured me they would search for her, and I’m sure he did.”