Carla Neggers - Cut and Run

“Is it Otis Raymond? Has something happened to him?”

He appreciated the note of worry and concern in her voice. “Not that I know of.”

“Then what?”

Phil Bloch knows your name, knows you were in Antwerp, knows you could have the stone. Never mind whether you do or you don’t. Never mind what you know and what you haven’t told me. Just get the hell out, sweetheart.

But he said only, “New information. I’ll explain another time. Watch yourself.”

“Matthew-”

“Do it, Juliana. Trust me on this, all right? God help me. I know what I’m talking about.”

For a few seconds she was silent. Then, “You know who’s behind all this, don’t you?”

She sounded breathless and excited and scared, and Stark knew if he gave her more, she’d be back on his doorstep, in deeper trouble than ever. He could almost see the brightness of those ice-cool emerald eyes. Christ, he had to find Bloch! But what good would that do? Coming down on Bloch’s head might only further endanger Weasel. Goddamn Ryder…

“I can’t talk,” he said. “Just watch yourself.”

“Won’t talk, you mean.” She was cool again, one tenacious lady. “You’re in Washington, aren’t you?”

“Take care of yourself. Why not take a trip to Vermont?”

She hung up on him.

Catharina sat at her bedroom window and looked down at the Christmas lights on Park Avenue. Tears streamed down her face, but she made no attempt to brush them away. Her thoughts had drifted back more than forty years, to the last Christmas with her mother and father in Amsterdam. She was just a teenager but had taken charge of the household. She’d planned for the holiday for weeks, scrounging up ingredients to make speculaas and appelbeignets, and Hendrik had brought rum and cocoa. What a feast they’d had! Johannes had managed to come, so tall and stoic, and Ann, so sweet and sad. Johannes had been marked for deportation to the Nazi labor camps and was in hiding, himself an onderduiker, and Ann, as the Jewish partner in a mixed marriage, was to report for sterilization procedures. She had refused and was in hiding too. Her family-her parents and younger sisters-had been deported the previous year and there had been no official word on where they were. The rumors were too dreadful to believe.

But that Christmas they’d ignored so much, laughing and carrying on, and afterward Catharina had sent goodies back with Wilhelmina for Rachel and Abraham. In a rare display of affection and pride, her mother had hugged both her daughters and told them they were fine young women. Hendrik had said he agreed, and when no one was looking, he’d kissed Catharina on the cheek. How she’d blushed! For hours after, her face burned. He was twenty-five and a hero in the Underground Resistance; everyone adored him.

Now, finally, she brushed away her tears, wishing her mother could be here with her. Catharina was nearing sixty herself. She was older than her mother had lived to be. And yet she wanted that stern, loving guidance, that soft lap, that strong shoulder on which to cry.

“You mustn’t blame yourself, dear Catharina…”

“Oh, Mamma,” she cried aloud, paralyzed with fear and indecision. Ever since her talk with Wilhelmina, she’d hidden herself away, looking for answers out the window, in the winter sky and the gray buildings and the Christmas trimmings. There were none. “If only you were here, Mamma, to tell me what to do!”

Drying her tears, she turned away from the window. She had a vision of her tiny daughter in pigtails and dirty sneakers, climbing up onto the piano bench, and she wanted to transport herself back in time and take that child in her arms and hold her, just hold her.

You must be strong, Catharina, she could hear her mother say. You must be strong.

She went into the library, where Adrian was sitting up late with a book. “Adrian,” she said, maintaining a deliberate air of nonchalance. Her stomach was tight, aching, hollow. “Adrian-has Juliana ever come to you about opening a safe-deposit box?”

He looked at her, his handsome face filled with tenderness as he studied her. He had to see how upset she was. But he hadn’t pressed her about the terrible tension that had gripped her since their daughter’s last Lincoln Center performance. It wasn’t that he didn’t care or that he didn’t want to know. Many times in the past he’d told her he wanted to know everything about her-everything she cared to tell him. But he’d also explained that he understood she was an intensely private woman, respected that, and had come to accept that there was a part of her he could never know. He blamed her family, the war. She’d been so young-old enough to remember, young enough not really to understand.

“Is she interested in getting one?” he asked, still watching her.

Catharina lifted her shoulders, her neck muscles crunching with the movement because they were so tense. Her carefree existence had spoiled her. She had her husband, her child, food, shelter, clothing. For so long she’d wanted for nothing.

“She has so many valuables,” she said lamely. “I was just wondering. Perhaps it’s something she should look into.”

Adrian sighed, and she could see the resignation in his eyes: he wasn’t going to get an explanation tonight, either. “I’ll talk to her about it, if you’d like.”

“Please.”

“Are you going to bed?” he asked.

It was another way of asking if she thought she’d sleep tonight; she hadn’t since Rachel’s visit. Adrian had tried to comfort her, but even after they made love she would lie awake, staring at the ceiling.

“In a little while,” she said, hearing the love in her voice, a love that went deeper than words-that could ignore half-truths. But her mind was racing. If Juliana has the Minstrel, what will she do? What will I do?

Yes, Mamma, I know, she thought; I must be strong.

Juliana had been unable to return to her trancelike state after Matthew’s call and had abandoned the piano. She was staring at the magnificent skyline, debating once more whether to tell anyone about the Minstrel’s Rough, when Aunt Willie stormed in, muttering in Dutch.

“Are you all right?” Juliana asked, climbing up from the couch.

“Of course. I was followed, but no matter. Do you have any binoculars?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. I usually keep them at my house in Vermont, for bird watching, but I can’t identify many birds, just the usual sparrows and-”

Aunt Willie hissed impatiently. “Will you get them?”

“Why?”

“Achh!”

“All right, all right.”

She dug them out of a drawer in the library and returned to the living room, where Aunt Willie was peering down at Central Park West, her face pressed up against the window. “I know I saw him,” she said.

Juliana handed her the binoculars. “Who?”

“Hendrik de Geer.” Wilhelmina looked through the binoculars only briefly, handing them back in disgust. “As I thought, he’s gone.”

“He was out there? But why-”

“He has his reasons, I’m sure. He always does.”

“Aunt Willie, I’d like to know more about him. He betrayed you and Mother during the war, but how? What exactly did he do? Why’s he here now? Dammit, if he’s hanging around outside my window-”

“I’m tired,” Wilhelmina said, yawning. “I’m going to bed. I suggest you do, too. You’ll want an early start for Washington in the morning.”

Juliana groaned, but she didn’t say a word. Dealing with Matthew Stark couldn’t be any worse than dealing with Wilhelmina Peperkamp.

After Stark’s intrusion, Ryder forced himself to calm down. Sweat matted his shirt to his back and lined his face and armpits. He felt himself shaking as the old indecisiveness returned. My God, does Stark know everything? Ryder’s breathing was rapid and light, but slowly, with practiced self-denial, he pulled himself together and headed upstairs, where he showered off the sweat and the stink of his fear. Stark’s visit, he tried to tell himself, meant nothing.