Peter Heller - Celine

“The house?”

“Gone. Gone gone gone. Where Dr. Dixon lives now with that pretty wife.”

“Did the boy, the boy Silas—”

“Died in the war.”

“Yes. Did he have a… a child?”

“A child ? He died in the war. How could he have a child ? Don’t you remember a thing? If he saw a girl a half mile away he’d run the other way. The boy never said a word. Not a damn word.”

Hank thanked her and she slammed the door.

For the next two years, while he was still in New Hampshire, he drove over and visited Sandwich and the cemetery maybe half a dozen times. He never found out anything he could ever use in connecting Silas to his mother, but he liked walking the dirt road along the stone wall above the big field, and for some reason he liked visiting Silas’s grave. He’d sit and speak about whatever was on his mind, and if it was summer he’d often stay to watch the swallows hunt in the long light of the late afternoon.

Fernanda Muños was not at home in New York. Or she did not answer her phone. Nor did she pick up at the number they had in Valparaiso. Dead end, for now. Celine sat on the bed. She did not look frustrated. She pursed her lips and dialed the New York number again. This time an answer.

A sleepy voice said, “Bueno?”

“Hello, Señora Muños? My name is Celine Watkins. I am an artist, just about your age, and I am also a private eye…”

Safe to say that in the richly colored life of Fernanda de Santos, she had never heard an introduction like this before. She was not put off. Even through a phone line, one could tell immediately that Celine Watkins had heft: She was not going to waste your time. The two chatted for almost fifteen minutes. The conversation might have concluded sooner, except that Fernanda sometimes lapsed into Spanish. She said, “Yes, I remember Paul Lamont. Who wouldn’t? The famous photographer from National Geographic. He was brilliant. But even so, even then, if he had not been so good… Pues—todavia el nos hubiera encantado. Even Allende.”

“You mean that he came to the palace? The presidential palace.”

“Yes, he came to some of the parties. It was not unusual. Many illustrious visitors came. All the embassies invited whomever was in town.”

“My God,” Celine whispered. She coughed once, cleared her throat. “Excuse me. You say you fled the country before the coup?”

“An anteater could have seen what was coming. You know I did a large and rather famous Chilean Guernica. This was an echoing of the disgust with Franco, with all fascists. My affiliations were well known. No, I was not at all popular with the generals.”

“Wow,” Celine murmured to herself. And to Señora Muños: “This is hugely helpful. Thank you so much.”

Pete had learned that the hotter the chase became, the more his wife’s mind clarified, like warming butter. Now she seemed dazed. “He was there,” she said. Her voice was husky. “Lamont. He was a great charmer, greater even than we had imagined. He charmed himself right into the presidential palace.” It occurred to Pete that the case had become personal. They all were, to an extent. But this one had become more so; it had had a certain charge right from the beginning, and the Quiet American now understood that Lamont may have been as charming, and as prodigal, as Harry Watkins.

She coughed. She patted her mouth with a Kleenex and straightened. “There is a photograph, Pete. What all this is about. I know. Now we have to call Gabriela. We’ll use the phone in the motel office.”

The owner of the Yellowstone Lodge was home. He had a gray beard to his sternum and rivaled Pete in volubility. Not much could impress him or ever would. Celine got the impression that when the Grim Reaper showed up with his scythe the proprietor would show him to one of the rooms with a moose print and tell him to cool his bony heels. He waved them to a phone.

Celine had a strong hunch and she was eager to test it. From what she was learning of Lamont, of how his mind worked, she was certain that he would place the two most important photographs of his life in the same frame. The one, of the darkest thing he had ever witnessed; the other, of the greatest love he had ever known, and lost. There was a weird and awful logic there that Celine, who coupled death and beauty in her own art, could appreciate. She would have bet a significant sum. When Gabriela answered, she was brisk. “Remember how your dad would give you pictures of Amana? How he’d slip the one picture behind another?” she said. “I want you to check the one on the ferry, your favorite. Open the frame. And call me back in five minutes at Poli’s Restaurant.” She hung up. They walked across the street. Celine walked fast and her breathing was clear. The phone rang as soon as they got to the counter.

“I—I have it.” Gabriela’s voice shook. “Christ.”

“Listen, Gabriela, we don’t have long. It’s a body.”

“Yes.”

“There’s a man beside it?”

“Two… two men.” The girl was holding it together, barely. Good.

“One looks familiar,” Celine said.

“Yes. Oh, God. Younger, young, but. Vice pres—”

“Makes sense. The other?”

“I don’t know. Latin. A soldier. Wait… there’s something here—”

“What? What is it?”

“On the back, something written. It’s Pop’s hand. Hold on.” Slowly she made it out: “It says, Francisco Peña de la Cruz, La Moneda.”

“La Moneda is the presidential palace. That would have been the day of the coup.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know, we’ll find out. Jesus. Right. Okay. Take your son now. Right now. Is he—”

“He’s here, he’s here.” Gabriela’s voice sounded strong and clear again. A bit afraid, but excited, too. That’s my girl, Celine thought. This is one to ride the river with.

“Okay, don’t pack a bag. This is just for a couple of days, I promise you. I want you to get in your car now and drive. Not to a friend or relative. Take the, the Thing. Park at a bus stop, take a city bus, then another, and change again. Leave the Thing at a random business to hold for a few days. Tell them it’s your husband’s fortieth birthday and you are going to pull a prank and surprise him, give them some money. Get to a suburb and—”

“I get the idea. Got it.”

“Okay, go. Call me in three days.”

Had either Celine or Pete thought to hit the stopwatch function on their watches they would have learned that searching for information on Francisco Peña de la Cruz and nearly finding the fantasy hideaway of fairy tales took them exactly seven minutes. The New York Times reported that in the chaos of the coup, Peña de la Cruz, the minister of finance, had gone missing. The first prominent casualty in the ugly history of the Disappeared. Well, he had just been found again, murdered with the help of someone very familiar to all Americans. As for Lamont’s hideaway—how many ice mountains are there?

They asked the question and the National Park Service’s EagleView satellite site told them. A handful. Not mountains but glaciers, glaciers hanging against mountains, and there were only a dozen that would be noticeable from outside the park, and only a handful from the east side. The east side it would have to be, because on the west were the remote lakes and woods of the Flathead National Forest, most of which was not accessible by road. They studied the east side of Glacier, above Babb, Montana, and there was a smattering of black lakes. They would have to be green, the color of Amana’s eyes. Many of the glacial lakes high up in the basins were shades of blue and green, but they were in the park. Poor Sitka. So outside the park it was, east side, and there were not too many lakes and ponds to count and there, there, was one called Goose and one called Duck, and they were green. Well, greenish. Sounds like a bird. And when they zoomed in, what was the most prominent peak? Chief Mountain. A great monadnock of a flattop, mesa-like, rugged and standing alone. Everything about it spoke of Paul Lamont. And it was almost on the Canadian border.