Blind Date (5 page)

“You've no right to scare a person like that,” one of the Englishmen intruded.

Levanter turned to the men. “Now you all listen,” he said.

“This young lady will walk all the way down, and you will carry her skis. I'll be around to make sure that nothing happens to her. If she is hurt, I have taken enough photographs to have all three of you arrested and charged by the authorities in ValPina.”

“And in whose name are you doing this?” snapped one man.

“Simple humanity will do for the moment,” Levanter replied. Then, raising his camera, he quickly photographed them again before they could raise their hands to cover their faces. Without a word, the girl took off her skis and handed them to her companions. They all started the long walk down.

By late afternoon, the four finally reached the midstation. Levanter was waiting for them in the restaurant. At first they all ignored him. After the meal, as the men gathered their skis together, the woman slipped over to his table.

“I wouldn't have made it without you,” she whispered. “You saved my life.” She leaned forward, drew his face close to hers, and kissed him. Her lips, chapped by the wind, felt dry.

Levanter was still in his robe the next morning when his breakfast was brought to his room. He opened the door and found himself facing the chest of an enormous man holding a breakfast tray. The waiter walked in and placed the tray on the table. Then, instead of leaving, he remained in the room, leaning against the wall, looking out of the window. Levanter assumed that the black-haired giant was waiting for a tip, and he handed him some change from the bureau. The man pocketed the tip but did not move.

“That will be all, thank you,” said Levanter, but the waiter paid no attention. Levanter then walked to the tray and bent over it, as if checking the contents. “Two soft-boiled eggs, bread, butter, coffee, milk,” he murmured out loud. “Sugar, salt, pepper.” Then, “Marmalade, jam,” he continued. “Of course, napkin, fork, knife, spoon. Everything's in order.” He looked at the
waiter to indicate that nothing else was needed from him. Again the man did not react. Levanter, annoyed, spoke directly to him. “I think that's all, thank you,” he said in a louder voice.

The man turned slightly and looked down at Levanter. “Eat! No talk,” he said gruffly, motioning with his chin toward the breakfast tray. “Eat!” He turned back to the window.

Levanter's first reaction was to back away, but he stopped himself. “Whether I eat or not is my business, not yours!” he said.

As if he were reprimanding a capricious child, the giant looked at Levanter and pointed at the tray. “You no talk. Eat! Eat!” he repeated, raising his voice. He stood with his arms folded.

Levanter thought for an instant about this strange behavior and the man's abnormal height, and it occurred to him that the waiter might be insane. He thought of running out of the room but was afraid to provoke the man. Still, he was unwilling to give in. The waiter noticed the delay.

“Eat!” he commanded, unfolding his arms and dropping his hands, each of which, Levanter thought, could squeeze his head like a soft-boiled egg.

He decided to obey rather than irritate the madman. He sat down and started to eat. The waiter, satisfied, resumed his post at the window. Every few minutes he glanced at the table to see what progress was being made. Levanter had barely managed to swallow his last mouthful when the man picked up the tray and calmly left the room.

Angry and humiliated, Levanter dressed and went to see the hotel manager. “One of your waiters, a very tall, black-haired —”

“Oh, yes, Antonio,” the manager interrupted, smiling politely. “He's from Barcelona.”

“I don't care where he's from,” Levanter said. He suddenly thought of the Russians in the cable car. “He brought me my breakfast and refused to leave the room until I had eaten it.”

The manager looked at Levanter expectantly. “Did he in any way prevent you from eating the breakfast, sir?”

“No, but why should he stay in my room while I eat?”

“Guests who call for room service often make the hotel's cutlery
into souvenirs,” said the manager. “And if the waiters don't notice and report such thefts, they are all required to pay for the missing pieces at the end of the week.”

“What does this have to do with me?” Levanter asked.

“As a Spaniard,” the manager explained, “Antonio is a man of honor, and he will not pay for the mistakes of others. He personally guards all cutlery used in the meals he serves.” The manager paused. “You know, Mr. Levanter, you are the first guest to object to his presence. Perhaps you just don't like Spaniards!”

Up on the midstation terrace, Levanter sank deeper into the deck chair. An indefinable, boundless dread came over him. First it flowed slowly, like a gray snow cloud; then it surged and gained in strength, compelling Levanter's heart to beat with double force.

He panicked, and lost a breath. Until a few years earlier, he had believed that his heart merely responded to his mind, that it acted in uncomplicated, clockwork response to the sovereign brain. But at times like this he knew the heart dictated sensation and that if the crude, simple pump faltered, Levanter could not make it work properly; his brain could do nothing more than react with intense terror.

He had tried to fashion his existence to accommodate the whims of this organ, as he always accommodated the demands of his flesh. He never went against its rhythms. When his heart was restless, he crowded his schedule with events and people. When his heart was calm, Levanter enjoyed living day by day, unconcerned about either chance or necessity. Rather than perceive his being in intellectual terms, he chose to call it a play and display of the heart, after a label he had seen once on a machine that recorded the echoes of his heart when he had been tested at a hospital.

As Levanter gazed at the stark, ominous cliffs, which reminded him of the walls of an ancient castle, he slowly began to let himself
unwind. He noticed a mist rising above the reaches of the forests, beginning to settle in one vast, flat shore over the width of the valley.

With a start, he scanned the terrace, afraid that he might have let his attention wander for too long. Nothing had changed: all the same people were at the tables; the three men he had come to watch still sat sipping their white wine. The Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs from the Kingdom of Indostran seemed bored by his two bodyguard skiing companions and was no longer talking to them. Levanter had seen the Deputy Minister look up toward the PicSoleil glacier several times, monitoring the encroaching mist. He was known to be an avid skier and was probably anxious to take a final run before the weather changed. Soon, he leaned down to buckle his ski boots. The bodyguards gulped down their wine and, like their boss, attended to their ski boots. The Deputy Minister summoned the waiter and paid the check.

At this time of day, most skiers preferred to climb no higher than the midstation. Levanter had noticed that nearly all the gondolas of the final fourteen-minute lift in the PicSoleil system had been departing empty.

The three men rose, zipped up their parkas, pulled on their hats, and started toward the entrance to the gondola station. They looked like three pudgy businessmen who had learned to ski late in life. In their country, skiing had recently become fashionable. Everyone even distantly attached to the Court traveled to the Alps in winter. The higher-ups enjoyed the super-chic resorts. But the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs was not liked by the foreign press, which blamed him for mass arrests, tortures, and deaths, so he skied at the less popular ValPina, where he could remain inconspicuous.

Levanter got up and put on his large-frame sunglasses, drew his ski cap over his forehead, and walked across the terrace to take his skis from the rack. Carrying them in one hand and the poles in the other, he realized again how heavy the skis were, but he was sure no one else had noticed.

The Deputy Minister and his bodyguards passed through the
turnstiles, flashing their one-week passes to the sleepy attendant. Levanter went through right behind them, holding his pass in front of his face. The PicSoleil gondolas, brightly painted, modern four-seat cabins, circulated at regular intervals on the steep cable. As one pulled close to the platform, the three men quickly tossed their skis into the outside racks. Levanter managed to slip his skis in too, but as he was about to enter the cabin, one of the bodyguards pushed him aside, as if by accident, and jumped in just as the gondola was moving out of reach. Levanter was not surprised; he knew they would not want a fourth passenger with them.

“Sorry,” said the man, shutting the door. “Terribly sorry,” he repeated through the half-lowered window as the gondola began its ascent.

“That's all right, no problem!” shouted Levanter cheerfully. “Just unload my skis at the top. I'll take the next gondola up!”

“Very good! Don't worry!” the bodyguard shouted back as the red cabin started to angle upward, its yellow lettering — Glacier PicSoleil Gondola 45 — shining in the bright sun.

Waving up at the three passengers, Levanter turned as if to wait for the next gondola, but instead he left the platform through a side turnstile, removing his glasses and hat. He went out of the station and cut across the terrace to the start of the downhill run. He was sure no one had seen him. The Deputy Minister was here incognito, not on an official visit, and therefore no local secret-service agent would have been assigned to cover him. Levanter picked up a pair of skis he had left in another rack that morning and put them on.

He pushed himself off and started to descend. After two minutes, he stopped on a large slope where he had a good view of the gondolas of PicSoleil. In the distance he could see a group of skiers traversing the white plateau. But here he was alone. As he looked up toward PicSoleil, he saw three gondolas, in evenly spaced succession, too far away for him to read their numbers. He unzipped his parka and took out his compact binoculars. Now he was able to make out the lettering and spot Gondola 45, the sun bouncing off its windows, well on its way up.

Soon it would pass over a chasm more than a thousand feet deep. From another pocket Levanter pulled a transmitter and extended its antenna. The transmitter, no bigger than a cigarette pack, operated on two simple alkaline batteries. In a moment of anxiety, it occurred to him that he had forgotten to test the batteries before inserting them that morning.

He reassured himself that even if the equipment failed him this time, he would have a dozen chances to use the skis as he had planned. This was the advantage of being on his own: if the circumstances changed, new opportunities would arise.

As the gondola approached the stretch of cable suspended between the pylons on either side of the chasm, Levanter's thoughts raced to the man in the cabin. He had first heard of the Deputy Minister in the course of his work with Investors International. This was the man who had created the notorious PERSAUD, a special independent branch of the police in charge of Indostran's internal security. Trumped-up charges of “anti-Court activities,” both current and retroactive, had been leveled against thousands of teachers, university professors, writers, artists, and enlightened clergy, who were sentenced without trial to spend years in PERSAUD prisons, penal colonies, and work camps. These prisoners, men and women, were not permitted to read or write or to receive letters. They were given no medical attention, and not even their families were allowed to visit them. To extract confessions and denunciations of others, they were beaten with belts with heavy buckles, burned with cigarettes, dragged behind cars and motorcycles, subjected to electric shocks, pushed into pits which they had been forced to dig and which were strewn with splintered glass. During interrogations male prisoners had their testicles prodded with the spiked tails of deep-sea fish; women detainees had their pubic hair singed with cigarette lighters and were then gang-raped. PERSAUD had ordered public executions of several intellectuals; the deaths of many others were never made public.

The previous winter, at an all-night party in a popular Alpine ski resort, Levanter had met several officials from the Court. Free of
the religious restraints of the palace, the men were exuberantly dancing and drinking with dozens of beautiful young women. Everyone spoke openly, and it was here that Levanter learned about the Deputy Minister's annual skiing vacations in ValPina. During the party Levanter took several snapshots of the guests, who were delighted to pose for him with their evening's companions on their laps.

At another party a week later, Levanter showed them the contact proofs of the photographs. All the officials were anxious to have enlargements, and one member of the Court's Advisory Council offered to pay Levanter well for all the pictures of himself.

Levanter thought for a moment. “The only payment I want is for you to promise to release the intellectuals jailed by PERSAUD,” he said half-jokingly.

“Why such an interest in intellectuals?” the dignitary asked jovially. “I was told you are the head of Investors International. What would an association of investors care about the release of some intellectuals?”

“Intellectuals are our best allies,” Levanter explained. “They invest all their energy and resources in ideas that change man's condition. It's a long-range investment, which seldom pays off during their lifetime. That's why we want to support them.”

Smiling, the dignitary took Levanter by the arm. “How about a small deal then?” he said softly. “For each color photograph of me with one of these beauties, I will secure the release of one intellectual.”

Levanter thought the man was making fun of him. “Release?” he asked in disbelief.

The dignitary nodded, chuckling at Levanter's astonishment.

“But these people have been arrested by PERSAUD as enemies of the Court,” Levanter said.