Forever (5 page)

Usually she was among the first passengers
off a plane; tonight, she was the very last. She was in no hurry.
There was no Grandpa to rush and call and tell she was back in
town. Nothing awaited her but the reality of death. The longer that
could be postponed, the better.

The helpful cabin attendant asked her if she
was all right. She nodded, thanked her and walked off in a
daze.

Sammy Kafka was waiting for her on the other
side of the jetway. He was dressed in a black suit, and wore a
black tie and an old-fashioned black crepe armband. For the first
time in her memory, he was without the trademark carnation in his
lapel or a welcoming smile on his face. Sammy's mourning went
deep.

Wordlessly, they threw their arms around
each other and embraced tightly. Now that her grandfather was dead,
his oldest and dearest friend was the closest thing to family
Stephanie had left. She remembered how, when she'd been five and
Grandpa had first introduced them, Sammy had squatted down in front
of her and, before hugging her fiercely, had said, 'Hello, Girlie.
I'm your Uncle Sammy.'

And she'd been his Girlie, and he her uncle,
ever since.

Strange, how over the years she had actually
come to think of him as flesh-and-blood kin.

'Tell me this is only a bad dream, Uncle
Sammy,' she begged softly. She drew back from the embrace and dug
her hands into his arms. Her eyes held a mixture of hurt,
disbelief, sorrow, and pleading. It was exactly the way the little
girl who had lost her parents at the tender age of five had looked.
'Please tell me I'll wake up soon, and that he's really here!'

The little man with the tufts of white hair
looked up at her with moist brown eyes. 'Oh, Girlie, how I wish I
could! I'd give anything to be able to make that happen.' He handed
her a beautifully ironed handkerchief, and she wiped her eyes and
dried her face with it. 'Do you have any luggage?' he asked.

She shook her head and sniffed. 'I took the
first flight I could get on, and there wasn't time to pack. Ted
said he would take care of it.'

'Good.' Sammy nodded approvingly. 'Then we
don't have to wait around. C'mon, let's blow this joint. I've got a
car and driver waiting.'

During the drive into Manhattan, she kept
staring out of the window at the sparse oncoming traffic. New York
won't be the same without Grandpa, she thought. It's as if I no
longer have any reason to live here.

They were passing Flushing Meadows and the
remnants of the 1964 World's Fair when she turned to Sammy. 'The
police - ' she began, and had to take a deep breath to get the
words out. 'You said they claim he ... he killed himself. How . .
.?' She swallowed to lubricate her dry throat. 'How did it
happen?'

He took her slender young hand in his.
'There's time enough to learn the gruesome details, Girlie,' he
advised. 'Let it rest for now.'

Her voice was soft but steely. 'Uncle Sammy,
I need to know\ Please. Don't try to spare me any pain. It won't
help.'

He swallowed miserably. 'If you insist,
Girlie,' he sighed. 'It was sometime after he and I went to see
Dinorah. That was last Monday at the Met. Pham was away on vacation
for a week - I think to bone up for his citizenship exam - and when
he returned today, he let himself in and found . . . '

'But
how
did he die?'

'Apparently he'd been dead about a week. He
... ' Sammy hesitated a moment. 'Are you sure you want to hear this
now, Girlie?'

'Uncle Sammy . . . 'She used her most
obstinate voice.

'All right already!' But his lips tightened
and he could barely get the words out. 'Pham found him hanging from
the chandelier in the bedroom.'

'Oh God!' Stephanie shut her eyes.

She could picture that heavy Dutch
chandelier as if it were right in front of her, and it occurred to
her that she'd never liked it - as if an object she liked would
have made a difference somehow. But try as she might, she just
couldn't picture her grandfather dangling from it. Not in a million
years.

She said quietly, 'There's so much to do ...
so many arrangements to make . . . ' Trying to think of little
things to occupy her mind.

Sammy squeezed her hand, told her all she
had to do was see this through. She didn't have to worry about a
thing. He would see to everything.

She squeezed his hand in thanks.

By the time they hit Manhattan, Stephanie
told him she'd decided to spend the night at the Osborne. 'But I
have to drop by my own place first.'

Her building was in the Village, in a
converted meat-packing plant at the end of Horatio Street, right by
the river. She told Sammy to wait in the car while she jumped
upstairs. 'I'll be back in a few minutes,' she promised. 'I have to
get Waldo. And yes, I'll be all right by myself.'

'There's no rush, Girlie,' Sammy assured
her. 'Take your sweet time.'

When she let herself into her seventh-floor
triplex, she climbed the narrow spiral stairs which wound their way
from the living room up through a well in the two-storey rooftop
addition to her objective, the plant-filled study which led out to
the terrace overlooking the Hudson. For once, she did not stop to
hit the outdoor floodlights to inspect her lavishly planted green
fiefdom, which a landscaping firm watered and did their magic to
twice weekly.

'Steph! Steph!' Waldo's strident voice
greeted Stephanie as she came up the stairs. 'How are youl How are
you? I love you, Steph!'

Stephanie had never intended having a parrot
as a pet - she had acquired the bird by having it foisted on her.
Four years previously, an acquaintance had dropped Waldo off before
going out of town, never returning to reclaim him. Pet-sitting had
become pet-owning.

So the giant Amazon parrot - named for the
Great Waldo

Pepper-was hers.

'I love you, Steph! Hiiiii. . . hiiiii

'If your Steph isn't very responsive today,'
she murmured, approaching the big brass cage hanging by one of the
windows, 'it's because she's feeling real low. You'll have to bear
with me, Waldo.'

Throughout the conversation, the bird
listened carefully, its head cocked to one side. Not understanding
a word, but liking the sound of her voice.

'Did the neighbours take good care of you?'
Stephanie took a moment to give Waldo's beak a half-hearted stroke
with a fingertip.

Waldo, ever greedy and hungry for treats,
said the magic words. 'Waldo wants a crack-er! Waldo wants a
crack-er!' And followed with wild squawking.

'Soon,' Stephanie promised as she unhooked
the heavy cage and lifted it.

'Wal-do!' the bird shrieked, 'Wal-do -1 love
you, Steph!'

'Ssssh!' she told him. 'You're going to wake
the -'

She bit her lip.

She had been about to say dead.

Once back outside, Stephanie handed the cage
over to the driver. He handled it warily as he deposited it on the
rear seat of the car, where it took up half the space. Without
being asked, Sammy got out and moved to the front passenger
seat.

He twisted around as she climbed into the
back, beside the cage. 'Girlie, are you sure you want to spend the
night uptown? You'll be all alone.' He looked worried.

'I won't be alone, Uncle Sammy,' she said
softly. She strummed the bars of the cage with her fingers. 'I'll
have Waldo here.'

'A parrot.' Sammy Kafka rolled his eyes.
'She'll have a parrot for company, heaven help us!' Then he got
serious again. 'Are you sure, Girlie?' He looked at her closely.
'Really, really sure?'

'I'm sure, Uncle Sammy.' She nodded.

'There'll be a lot of painful memories,' he
warned her.

'I want them,' she said softly.

And thought, I need them.

Sidon, Lebanon

They hadn't driven a mile before all hell
broke loose. One moment the half-deserted streets were peaceful and
sunny, and the next, the roars and shrieks and thunderous
explosions of bombardment rent the air.

It was as if the skies had suddenly broken
open and the apocalypse was at hand. A fusillade of forty
simultaneously launched Israeli rockets crashed to earth, five of
them smashing into a six-storey building not three hundred feet in
front of the taxi.

'Allah help us!' the driver shrieked as he
slammed on the brakes and yanked the steering wheel abruptly to the
left, throwing the battered white Mercedes into a short broadside
skid.

In the front passenger seat, Johnny Stone
grabbed the dashboard with one hand and the doorhandle with the
other. He held on for dear life as the balding tyres squealed
against the locked brakes and the car slid sideways, wedging him
against the door with its careening centrifugal force. When it came
to a halt, they were blocking both lanes.

The building in front of them disintegrated
as if in slow motion. The front wall burst out and the roof blew
sky-high. A tree was uprooted and sent flying, and tortured pieces
of wreckage rained down all around, miraculously falling short of
the car. Already, a massive rising cloud of dust and debris was
hiding the destruction from view.

'Another few seconds,' the Arab driver
muttered, 'and we would have been blown up also. But we are alive.
Insah Allah.'

'Insah Allah
,' Johnny Stone agreed,
automatically reaching for the Leica which hung around his neck. It
was the professional photographer's instantaneous reaction, and he
had to fight against it, forcing himself to leave the camera be. He
had taken enough pictures of scenes just like this one. What good
would one more do? What good had any of them done?

Just then a second fusillade of rockets
fell, and orange fireballs mushroomed all around. What sounded like
a sonic boom rolled at them, and the street ahead shimmered in the
heat wave as furious flames leapt and crackled and devoured.

'We turn around,' the driver said, already
backing up and putting the Mercedes through a series of deft
manoeuvres. 'I know another way,' he said, flicking Johnny a
sideways glance. 'Allah willing, we will get you to Damascus in
time for your flight.'

Johnny twisted around in his seat. His eyes
were veiled as he looked out through the dusty rear window. All
around, fires burned furiously. The cloud of dust was starting to
settle, and where the building had stood, he now saw furnished
rooms listing like some crazy giant doll's house. From somewhere,
he could hear distant ululating cries of grief.

Lebanon.

He sighed wearily.

How he'd loved it, how wonderful had been
the energetic clash of East meeting West.

His lips tightened grimly.

How he had come to hate it.

But he'd always returned for one more
picture, one more documentation of death and destruction and
suffering. Well, no more. This time he was off -
arrivederci
, baby! - and for good. Nothing could stop him,
not hell or high water, not his editor back at
Life
, not all
the bombs in the Middle East. Once his mind was made up about
something, Johnny Stone was unstoppable. The only drummer he
listened to was his own.

Johnny Stone was an award-winning
photographer, a freelancer who dared tread where lesser - or wiser
- men refused. He was thirty-five years old, a mixture of Irish and
German. He had black hair and green-blue eyes and a decidedly
cynical cast to his mouth.

He was not handsome, but he was virile: tall
and lean and hard-bodied. Women found him devastatingly
attractive.

He also had an over-abundance of talent,
fame, self-confidence, and nerves of steel.

And he needed them now. On both sides of the
taxi, the buildings were bombed-out ruins, jagged fingers of stone
and stucco reaching up into the sky. There was very little glass to
be seen: it had been blasted to smithereens. In the distance,
mushrooming grey clouds of smoke rose from behind rooftops, rising
high before being dispersed by the sea breeze; explosions still
reverberated, but grew distant, like receding thunder.

Johnny Stone was barely aware of it. He was
occupied with something far closer to his heart than destruction -
the concise printout which had come over the AP wire in the
bunker-like press office less than an hour earlier. Every word was
engraved in his mind.

NEW YORK, May 22 (AP) -
Carleton Merlin,
the world-famous biographer and bestselling author whose
unauthorised works have included the lives of Frank Sinatra,
Elizabeth Taylor, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Stavros Niarchos,
Maria Callas, The Krupp Dynasty, and Pablo Picasso, was found dead
in his apartment here, police say.

The cause of death was apparently
suicide.

Mr Merlin is survived by a granddaughter,
Stephanie Merlin, the host and co-founder of the syndicated
television show,
Half Hour
. Funeral
arrangements have
not yet been made.

Johnny had known Carleton Merlin; liked to
think he'd known him well. And the man he knew would never have
committed suicide - not in a million years.

Not Carleton Merlin, whose books had
consistently hit the number one spot on the world's non-fiction
bestseller lists, whose tenacious digging for details and truth and
secrets had made him one of the most widely read, respected - and
yes, feared - men in publishing.

It was impossible to think of him as dead -
even more impossible to believe he could have taken his own
life.

Johnny stared out through the windshield.
They had left the city centre behind. From here, the explosions
looked almost like benign puffballs, or dirty wads of cotton. It
would not be long before they'd reach the Syrian frontier, and then
Damascus. From there it was a hop to Amman via Alia, the Royal
Jordanian Airline, and another hop from Amman to Cairo. And from
Cairo to New York was a nonstop breeze.