Aaron Elkins - Old Scores

The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. If she couldn't get on a military flight, we'd get her a commercial one. Maybe we'd do that anyway, and book her first class. It'd be my treat. What better way did I have to splurge?

But it was barely afternoon in Seattle, so she was still somewhere on the road, probably on the Olympic Peninsula near Kalaloch or Ruby Beach if she was taking the route we'd planned. It hurt to think of how much pleasure there would have been in showing her those wild, magical places. Still, something was better than nothing.

I sighed, punched in my own telephone number, and waited for my voice to come on. When she arrived, she would turn on the answering machine to see if I had left anything for her.

"Hello," said a sepulchral voice. "This is Chris Norgren." It paused to allow this complex message to be grasped, and proceeded somberly. "I'm sorry I can't come to the phone now, but if you will wait for the signal and leave a message, I will…"

I tapped my foot impatiently. Was that really what I sounded like, or was it some mysterious quirk of answering-machines that made everybody sound like a zombie?

Finally, the beep came. "Hi, Anne," I said, making an all-out effort to sound like a living person, "welcome to the Emerald City, and hope you had a wonderful drive. There are lots of good things in the freezer, and you know where the booze is. Everything in the fridge should be fresh, more or less. Listen, I just had a terrific idea. Call me when you get in. Don't worry about the time-"

Click. "Chris?"

It was a moment before I could reverse gears and get my voice going again. "Anne? What are you doing there?"

"I got in early. I swung over to Highway 5 at Portland. I wanted to save the Peninsula to see with you."

And bless you for it, I thought warmly. "Listen, I'm glad I caught you early. I'm going to have to stay over in France for another two or three days-"

"Three days! But that'd only leave us- Why do you have to stay three more days?

"Well, the police asked me to-"

"Police? What's going on there?"

And so I had to shift gears again and explain, which took some time; it had been an eventful couple of days. I even told her about getting pitched out the window, managing to minimize the more ludicrous aspects of it without playing down the dramatic, brush-with-death elements.

"My God, Chris," she said, gratifyingly shocked, "I'm just glad you're all right. You are all right?"

"I'm fine. And I have a great idea. I want you to come here to Dijon. Fly back to Europe early."

I told her about the marvelous fall weather northern Europe was having. I suggested driving to Languedoc and spending a night in one of the old inns in the walled city of Carcassonne, something she'd talked about wanting to do. I pointed out that the new plan would give us Sunday together, which we wouldn't get otherwise.

"Can't," she said.

"Why not?"

"If you knew the strings I had to pull to get my nights, you wouldn't ask me to change them."

"Well, don't change them. Come commercial. I'll arrange your tickets from here."

"Chris, I just can't. It would be too-well, too embarrassing to cancel, after the trouble I put them to. I just can't do it. They bumped people to get me on."

"Well, couldn't you-" But I didn't have anything to offer. "Oh, hell." I was feeling good and sorry for myself.

"Chris, it's not the end of the world. It's just a logistical snag, that's all. We've had them before."

I smiled. "That's what I was telling you last week." A snatch of that conversation came back to me. "Did you have a chance to do your thinking?" I asked.

She hesitated. "Did I tell you I wanted to do some thinking?"

"Yes." Now I hesitated. "You didn't say about what, though."

I heard her swallow some wine. "I think you know."

"Your commission," I said.

Anne was at a crossroads of her career. After ten years in the Air Force, she had been thinking about the possibility of resigning her commission and coming back to civilian life. But she was also up for early promotion to major, and I knew how much that meant to her.

"Yes, my commission."

"And?"

"And I came to a decision. Sort of." I heard her drink some more. I heard her put the glass down.

"And are you planning to let me in on it?"

"Well, it's still not completely made. I have to… there's more to it."

"Do I get a hint?"

"No, you don't get a hint," she said with sudden sharpness, "because if I discuss it with you, you get all self-sacrificing and reasonable, and then I start taking your needs into consideration, and I just think that this is one decision I ought to be making for myself."

"It's important to me, too, Anne, that's all I'm saying," I said. Reasonably, of course.

"Ah, Chris, I know that." I could tell that she was already sorry about the flare-up. "But let's drop it for now. I don't want to talk about it on the telephone."

"Of course," I said, "if that's what you want."

I was being so reasonable that I was starting to irritate me. But underneath, I wasn't feeling reasonable at all, and both of us knew it. I wanted her to resign. I wanted her to come back to the States and find a real job. I wanted her to live near me, where she belonged damnit. I wanted her to live with me.

But apparently it wasn't going to work out that way. Why would she worry about breaking that to me on the telephone? I didn't say anything more for a long time, for fear of saying something decidedly unreasonable and not in the least self-sacrificing.

Finally, she spoke, very quietly. "Well, then, I guess I'll see you Saturday?"

"Yes. I'll get back earlier if I possibly can. I-I love you." "I love you, Chris."

There was a click and a hum, and I was sitting alone on a hotel bed in a room "lit" by three 25-watt bulbs, six thousand miles from home and from the only person who really mattered to me. I put the receiver back in its cradle.

All things considered, I didn't think it was going to go down as one of my better nights.

Clotilde Guyot's eyes were bright and brimming. "Rene Vachey was a saint."

I had brought this jolly, affable woman close to indignant tears with what I'd thought was a reasonably innocuous question: Could she tell me anything that might throw some light on Julien Mann's charges?

"Can you have any idea," she asked, "what it was for him to hide a family wanted by the Nazis? It wasn't only the risk of our being heard or seen, or of a surprise visit by the Gestapo, you see. It was the number of people whose goodness had to be relied on-the milkman who pretended to take no notice when a bachelor began buying three liters of milk a week, the doctor who asked no questions about a six-year-old 'nephew' never seen before, who had come down with whooping cough. We never knew when someone might take offense at a fancied slight and drop a vindictive word to some petty functionary. There was never a knock on the door when our hearts wouldn't stop."

She looked at me accusingly. "And he didn't have to do it, monsieur. He did it out of pity, out of kindness."

"I'm sorry, madame," I said sincerely. "I didn't mean to imply otherwise. I'm only trying to find out whatever I can about the Rembrandt and where it came from."

She shrugged. "I wouldn't know anything about his private purchases. I know where he bought it, that's all, as I told your friend."

"Yes," I said, careful not to tread too heavily, "but Julien Mann says it's actually a Flinck that-"

"I know what he says," she said tightly. She folded her hands on her desk. "I am quite sure he is mistaken."

"I think so, too, but I thought perhaps you might remember something about him-about his father, I mean-"

She jerked her head no. The tears were very close now. "It was fifty years ago, monsieur," she said through a throat that had all but closed up. "I don't recollect him at all."