Solo (Aka the Cretan Lover) (v5) (10 page)

'I'd like to interview Lieselott Hoffmann before I leave for Belfast. Tomorrow morning would be fine.'

Ferguson said, 'Arrange that with Dr Riley, Superintendent.'

'I'd also like a list of all the hits mentioned in that file. Dates, places, the works.'

Morgan walked to the door. Ferguson said, 'Asa, as far as I'm concerned, you're on leave for a month.'

'Of course.'

'On the other hand, if there's anything we can do....'

'I know,' Morgan said. 'Don't hesitate to call.'

In 1947, as the first rumblings of the Cold War were heard on the horizon, J. Parnell Thomas and his House Committee on un-American activities, decided to examine the Hollywood film industry for signs of Communist subversion.

Nineteen writers, producers and directors formed a resistance group, declaring that it was none of the Committee's business what their political opinions were. Eleven were called to Washington to answer for themselves in public. One, Bertolt Brecht, departed for East Germany in a hurry. The remaining ten all refused to answer, using the freedom of speech guarantee contained in the first amendment of the American constitution.

The affair sent shock waves all the way down through the industry, involving far more than the famous ten. In the period that followed, many actors, writers and directors had their reputations so damaged by Senate investigations that they never worked again.

Sean Riley, an Irish-American writer with a reputation for plain speaking, was one of the casualties. In spite of his two best-screenplay Oscars, he suddenly found himself unable to get work of any kind. His wife, who had suffered from heart trouble for years, was unable to take the strain and worry of that terrible period. She died in 1950, the year her husband refused to appear before a Senate subcommittee headed by Joseph McCarthy.

Riley didn't surrender. He simply withdrew into the country, a rambling old Spanish-American farmhouse in the San Fernando Valley, taking his eight-year-old daughter with him.

For years, he made a living as what is known in the industry as a script doctor. Anyone in trouble with a screenplay took it to Riley and he rewrote it for a fee. Naturally, his name never appeared in the credits.

It was not, in the end, such a bad life. He wrote two or three novels, planted a vineyard and raised his daughter with love and understanding and grace, to respect the land and what was best in people and never to be afraid.

She was an angular, olive-skinned, awkward girl with grey-green eyes and black hair inherited from her mother, a Polish Jew from Warsaw, when she went to UCLA. She majored in psychology in 1962, researched in experimental psychiatry at the Tavistock Clinic in London, and took her doctorate at Cambridge University by 1965.

She went to Vienna to the Holzer Institute for the Criminally Insane to follow her particular interest, the psychopathology of violence. It was here that she first came into contact with that startling phenomenon of our times, the urban guerrilla. The terrorist from the middle-class home.

During the years that followed, she pursued this study, interviewing her subjects in most of the major cities of Europe, working, where she had to, for the State authorities involved, although this was not a situation she was happy with.

She kept the closest of contacts with her father, returning home at least twice a year. He visited her in Europe, mainly when the developing Italian film scene took him to Rome and new opportunities. Once again, his name appeared on the credits. He won screenplay awards in Berlin, in Paris, in London. And then, in 1970, he collapsed with a massive heart attack at the San Fernando Valley farmhouse.

She was in Paris at the time, at the Sorbonne, and flew home at once. He hung on, waited for her, so that when she entered his room at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, the blue eyes in the strong tanned face that was suddenly so old, opened instantly. She took his hand. He smiled once and died.

They all came to the funeral. Directors, actors, producers, front-office men who hadn't spoken to him during the bad years. Who'd turned and walked the other way when they saw him coming. Now he was dead, there was even talk that the Academy was considering a special award.

As a Catholic of the old-fashioned variety, she had him buried instead of cremated and stood at the cemetery, shaking one hand after the other as they all filed past, hating every coward, every hypocrite there.

Afterwards, she fled, back to the farmhouse in the Valley, but that was no good - no good at all with memories of him everywhere.

There was no one to turn to, for in one respect he had never been able to help her and that was in her relations with the opposite sex. Her dealing with men had always been brief and unsatisfactory emotionally and therefore unsatisfactory physically also. The blunt truth was that she had never found anyone who matched up to her father.

When she was close to the final edge of things, salvation appeared in the shape of an airmail letter with an English stamp postmarked Cambridge which dropped into her mailbox one morning. It contained the offer of a fellowship at her old college, New Hall and she grabbed with both hands, fleeing to the only other refuge she had ever known in her life.

And things had gone well for her. It was like coming home. There was the work, there was her book and there was Cambridge in all its glory, particularly on that beautiful April morning in 1972, when she first met John Mikali.

She worked all night on the proofs of the fifth edition of her book, the publishers wanting them back by Friday. Instead of going to bed, she followed her set routine. Put on a tracksuit, got out her bicycle and rode down towards the centre of the city, clean and calm and beautiful in the morning.

Fifteen minutes later, she was running on the footpath along the Backs, the lawns which slope down to the River Cam. She was thoroughly enjoying herself, pleased with the night's work, relishing the keen morning smell and then she became aware of the sound of someone overtaking her and Mikali appeared at her side.

He wore a very simple navy blue tracksuit and running shoes. A white towel was wrapped around his neck.

'Nice morning for it,' he said.

She recognized him at once, could hardly fail to for posters of him, featuring the usual photo, had been plastered all over Cambridge for a fortnight.

'Yes, it usually is.'

He smiled instantly. 'Heh, a fellow American. This must be my day. Are you an exchange student or something?'

The Irish side of her rose quickly to the surface and she laughed out loud. 'Those days are long gone. I'm what they call a don here. I teach at the university. My name's Katherine Riley. I'm from California.'

'Good God, so am I. My name's Mikali - John Mikali.'

She took his hand with a slight reluctance, aware of a tingling excitement, a coldness in her belly that was new to her.

'Yes, I know. You're playing Rachmaninov's Fourth tonight with the London Symphony.'

'I trust you'll be there.'

'Are you joking? Some students queued overnight to catch the box office the first day it opened. There hasn't been a ticket available for that concert since then.'

'Nonsense,' he said. 'Where do you live?'

'New Hall.'

'I'll have a ticket delivered there by noon.'

There was no way she could say no, or even wanted to. 'That would be marvellous.'

'Afterwards they're throwing a reception for me at Trinity College. Can I send you a card for that as well? It could be a bore, but not if you came.' Before she could reply, he glanced at his watch. 'I hadn't realized the time. I've got a four-hour rehearsal this morning and Previn is a hard taskmaster - see you tonight.'

He turned and ran away across the Backs, very fast indeed. She stood there, watching him go, aware of the power in him, more excited than she had ever been in her life before.

At the reception, she stood watching him on the other side of the room, in the velvet suit, the open black silk shirt, the golden crucifix around his neck, all of which had become his trademark. He was restless as they crowded around, his eyes searching the room constantly. When he found her, the smile was instant and he reached for two glasses of champagne from a tray carried by a passing waiter and made straight for her alone.

'I phoned your college,' he said. 'Why didn't you tell me? Dr Riley - Fellow of New Hall. Ail that stuff.'

'It didn't seem important.'

'Was I good tonight?'

'You know you were,' she said simply and took the champagne from him.

There was a sudden, strange look in his eyes. It was as if, in some way, he had made a discovery he had not looked for.

He smiled and raised his glass. 'To Katherine Riley, a nice Catholic girl, with wit, perception and exquisite musical taste who is going to take me the hell out of here within the next three minutes and show me Cambridge.'

'Jewish,' she said. 'My mother was, you see, and that's what counts.'

'Okay, I'll amend it. Katherine Riley, a nice Jewish girl. Does that mean you can cook as well?'

'Oh, yes.'

'Excellent, now let's get out of here. You can take me on a punt in the moonlight, show me the romance of all those gleaming spires of yours.'

It rained after the first half-hour, so that they were both soaked to the skin by the time they managed to abandon the punt at the side of the river.

Later, when the taxi dropped them at New Hall, it was raining even harder and they arrived at the door to her rooms as wet as two human beings could possibly be.

When she got the door open and made to enter, he took her arm gently. 'No,' he said. 'This first time I carry you across the threshold. It's an old Greek custom. We're very ethnic, you know.'

Afterwards, somewhere close to three o'clock when they finally stopped, she turned to him in bed as he reached for a cigarette.

'That was nice. I never knew it could be like that.'

'Go to sleep,' he said gently, putting an arm around her.

It had stopped raining now and moonlight filtered into the room. He lay there for quite a while, smoking and staring up at the ceiling, his face grave. When she moaned in her sleep, his arm tightened around her instinctively.

'Do you realize Milton was responsible for this tree?' she demanded.

They were sitting under the mulberry tree in the Fellows' Garden of Christ's College, the tree the great poet was reputed to have planted himself.

'I'm totally indifferent.' Mikali kissed her on the neck. 'Nothing matters on a day like this. Spring in Cambridge and you have to work.'

'For the rest of the week, then I'm due a vacation.'

'I don't know, Katherine. This work you do. Violence, killing, terrorism. That's a hell of a field for a woman. No - let me amend that. A hell of a field for anyone.'

'Oh, come on,' she said. 'What about your time in the Legion in Algeria? I've read those magazine articles. I mean, what scene were you playing then?'

He shrugged. 'I was just a kid. I joined up on impulse. It was an emotional thing. But you - you really seek them out. Someone told me last night that you're working on this German girl, the one with the Baader-Meinhof connections. I didn't know she was over here.'

'Yes, she's at Tangmere. It's a special institution not far from here. Government sponsored.'

'Oh, I see. You're handling her case officially?'

She hesitated. 'Yes, that's the only way I could get in to see her, but I hope I've won her trust as well.'

'Didn't she hide this guy the newspapers call the Cretan in her room at Frankfurt the night he shot that East German Minister?'

'That's right.'

'I was there myself,' he said. 'Giving a concert in the university.' They stood up and started to walk. 'I don't understand. Surely the police could have got some sort of description of him out of her. Enough to trace him. I've always understood the Germans were pretty thorough that way.'

'He wore a balaclava helmet. You know the kind of thing? Holes for the eyes, nose and mouth. She couldn't describe him, even if she wanted to.'

'What do you mean?'

Katherine Riley smiled. 'Apparently, he filled in the time making love to her.'

'Wearing the balaclava? Say, that's heavy stuff.'

'I wouldn't know. I haven't tried it.'

Later, in a punt on the river, he said, 'Katherine, I have a villa in Hydra. Do you know where that is?'

'Yes.'

'The house itself is way down the coast. You can only reach it by boat or over the mountains on foot or on a mule. Actually, there is a telephone line all the way across the mountains. In fact, if you ever get lost, look for the telephone poles and follow them.'

'Lost?'

'You said you were due a vacation this weekend. It occurred to me that you might like to come to Hydra. I've got three weeks going spare, then I'm due in Vienna. Would you consider it?'

'I already have.'

Later, on the telephone to Deville, he said. 'I've established contact as you suggested and I can assure you that there's no problem as concerns the little German package. None at all.'