The Last Supper (30 page)

“Yes. It would be torture, but it would be all right.”

“Not torture. Bliss. We could be sexual friends.”

“Sexual friends?”

“You don’t believe in sexual friendship?”

“Oh, yes. But I didn’t know that women believed in it, too.”

“Oh, dear—you’re not telling me you’re queer?”

Christopher laughed. “No.”

“Well, then. Shall we try it?”

They went upstairs together.

Months later, Rosalind turned to Christopher in bed and seized his ears in her two hands. It was a large double bed in her overheated bourgeois flat at the top of an apartment house; from the
windows they could see the roofs of the royal palace. Christopher’s pistol in its shoulder holster hung from one bedpost, Rosalind’s from the other. She kneeled astride Christopher, her
black hair swinging, and laughed.

“Pistols on the bedposts,” she said. “Really, it’s like some perverse Teutonic brothel. We owe so much to Wolkowicz and Darby.”

“Can we change the subject?”

“You don’t want to gossip about our masters? Such an honorable Ameddican. I thought it was all right to backbite if one was in bed.”

Christopher looked at his watch and stirred. Rosalind pinned his shoulders to the mattress.

“Do let me gossip,” she said. “Robin can be terribly funny. Do you know what he calls you and Wolkowicz? ‘Tall-blond-and-handsome and Short-brutish-and-ugly.’
”

Christopher picked Rosalind up—she was a small girl—and set her on the other side of the bed. He went to the window and looked out. Fat snowflakes drifted out of a gray sky, turning
the rooftops white. Rosalind called to him; he didn’t answer. She crossed the room and climbed naked onto the windowsill.

“Snow,” she said. “If we start now in that great beast of a car of yours, we can be in St. Anton by morning. Wouldn’t it be lovely to get out of this filthy city and up
into the lovely clean mountains?
Skiing
, Christopher.”

Rosalind always called her sexual partner by his last name, a reminder of the terms of their contract. Love was never mentioned between them; as Rosalind had specified, they had remained
friends.

“I’m the duty officer this weekend,” Christopher said.

“In the absence of Robin and Short-brutish-and-ugly, you’re in charge. Call in somebody else.”

Wolkowicz was away, meeting the Director in London. Darby had left Vienna, too. Christopher hesitated.

“
Sun
, Christopher,” Rosalind said. “We’d see the sun. Remember the sun? Driving up the Vorarlberg, we’d break through the clouds into dazzling sunlight. The
virgin snow would be gleaming on the mountainsides, we’d breathe the Alpine air.”

“All right. Pack.”

They drove all night, and as Rosalind had foreseen, they arrived in St. Anton, in brilliant sunshine, at midmorning. They skied until late afternoon and then came down to the hotel for hot
chocolate. They sat on the terrace, basking in the sun; Rosalind had got a light tan and her eyes were more beautiful than ever. Suddenly they brimmed with laughter.

“Ah,” she said.

Rosalind was gazing over Christopher’s shoulder at a couple in ski clothes who stood on the path leading to the hotel. They were kissing passionately; the woman’s fingers clawed at
the man’s back. They separated and walked on, still kissing, toward the hotel. Desire had made them unsteady and they staggered slightly as they groped their way along the snowy path, eyes
shut. The woman took off her cap and shook her blond hair loose. She looked directly into Christopher’s face. It was Ilse. Robin Darby’s hand clasped her breast through the wool of her
sweater.

Rosalind covered her mouth and laughed.

— 3 —

If Wolkowicz, with his sensitivity to the moods of others, suspected his wife’s adultery, he did not betray his suspicions to Darby or to Ilse by so much as a gesture, and
he never mentioned them to Christopher. But he often left the Sewer during his shift on duty, leaving Christopher in charge. The schedule was ideal from the point of view of the lovers: when Darby
was off duty, Wolkowicz was on duty, fifty feet underground, sealed in a secret installation. This gave Ilse and Darby a sense of freedom: they lunched together in restaurants, went to tea dances
in hotels, strolled through the Prater.

Nevertheless, Wolkowicz, using all his professional skills, watched them, collecting evidence. One day he came to work an hour early, bringing Christopher with him. He carried a large yellow
envelope, the flap secured with tape. He closed the steel door behind him and threw the envelope onto Darby’s desk.

Darby lifted his amused eyes. “What’s this?” he asked.

“Open it up.”

Darby slit the seal and emptied the contents, a stack of glossy photographs bound with a rubber band, onto the polished surface of the desk. Darby removed the rubber band and began to look at
the pictures. A look of mild interest spread over his face. Rosalind, standing beside him, flushed and bit her lip.

“Christopher,” she said, “shall we go check the machines?”

Wolkowicz stood in front of the door. “Stay put,” he said, “both of you.”

Darby, still amused, looked from Rosalind to Wolkowicz to Christopher. He separated the photographs into two stacks and put the larger stack back into the yellow envelope. Then he held up the
top photo from the smaller stack: it was a clear, perfectly exposed candid portrait of Darby and Ilse, naked together in an overstuffed chair.

“I’ll have copies of each of this lot,” Darby said. “I don’t think the outdoor shots are up to much, do you? Too many clothes.”

Wolkowicz took the photographs out of Darby’s hand. Darby offered no resistance.

“What we have here, in this sewer,” Wolkowicz said, “is a very good operation. Nothing should spoil it. So what I want is peace and brotherhood down here. But at four
o’clock this afternoon, I want you to meet me, Darby, out in the woods. Christopher will bring you to the place. I’ll take Rosalind with me now.”

Darby wasn’t smiling, but no hint of guilt or embarrassment crossed his face. “Is Ros to be a hostage?” he asked.

“Just show up,” Wolkowicz said.

On the way to his rendezvous with Wolkowicz, while Christopher drove, Robin Darby chattered. “You’re remarkably like your father,” he said. “Not in
looks, really—it’s the manner. You seem to have the same sort of super-absorbent mind. Rather scary, actually; your father was otherworldly. Ros loaned me the book of your poems. The
poetic voice is
quite
similar. Is all that deliberate? Do you consciously emulate him?”

“We’re almost there,” Christopher said.

The Mercedes was rolling along a narrow road in the woods. The windshield was steamy. Christopher rolled down the window and the sound of the tires crunching on the snow came inside. The
shuttered façade of a
Heurigestube
, closed for the winter, came into view. Wolkowicz waited in the parking lot, a squat figure in a duffel coat.

“An encounter in the woods over a lady’s virtue,” Darby said. “How very Ruritanian.”

Darby alighted. He wore a green Loden cape. Wolkowicz said nothing, but his eyes never left Darby’s smiling face. Wolkowicz took off his coat and hung it on the hood ornament of his
Mercedes. He gave his P-38 to Christopher, and then drew a snub-nosed .38 caliber revolver from an ankle holster.

“Is it to be pistols, then?” Darby asked.

Wolkowicz gave the second pistol to Christopher. Then, without so much as drawing in his breath, he launched himself across the five or six feet of space that separated him from Darby and
smashed his fist into the other man’s bearded face. Darby’s thin body flew backwards, cape fluttering as he fell.

Christopher had never seen anyone move so fast and so violently as Wolkowicz. Before Christopher heard the sound of Wolkowicz’s fist smashing the cartilage in Darby’s nose, the two
men were on the ground, flailing each other. Neither used his voice; the only sound was the fall of fists, the impact of feet, and gasps of pain and effort. Both men were trained fighters.
Wolkowicz used no judo, only his fists and feet; perhaps he was too angry. Darby, who knew that he had no chance against Wolkowicz in a fistfight, did use his training. He kicked Wolkowicz in the
groin and pounded his stomach and kidneys with cleaverlike blows with the edge of his hands. The struggle might have lasted three or four minutes, a long time. Neither man won. It just ended.

Wolkowicz and Darby lay together for a moment in the trampled snow, which was pink with their blood. Then Wolkowicz, sobbing for breath as the result of a blow to the sternum, got to his feet
and struggled to the car. He put his hands on the fender and fought to breathe. Darby, still lying in the tangle of his ruined cape—Wolkowicz had used it to sling him against a
tree—gazed at his adversary. All the sparkling expression had been beaten out of Darby’s eyes. Blood poured from his broken nose into his beard; he reached into his mouth and brought
out a broken tooth.

Wolkowicz picked up his P-38. Darby’s eyes did not change expression. Christopher moved quickly to place his body between the two enemies. But Wolkowicz had no plan to shoot Darby. Chest
heaving, he tucked his holstered pistol into the waistband of his trousers and put a hand on Christopher’s shoulder, moving him to one side. He spat a globule of reddened saliva into the snow
and pointed a finger at Darby. The finger was broken.

“I just want you to know,” Wolkowicz said, coughing, “that this was only round one. Nothing’s over yet. Got it, Limey?”

Darby held Wolkowicz’s enraged glance for a long moment. Then he scooped up a double handful of snow and pressed it against his ruined face.

— 4 —

Christopher was awakened the following night by a pounding on his door, hammer blows that echoed through the apartment. Rosalind was with him; she stood behind Christopher in
the darkened room with a pistol in her hand while he opened the door.

Ilse Wolkowicz stood on the landing, holding the valise with which she had been battering the door panels.

“Paul, Paul,” she said. “You have to let me in. Barney is drinking, he’s gone crazy, he went out. He’s going to do something terrible.”

Christopher turned on the light. Rosalind’s nude figure, white skin and black hair, leaped into view; she was still pointing her Walther, which she held in the approved two-handed grip, at
the open door. Ilse looked her up and down.

“Dear God,” she said with a shrill laugh, “what a picture.” With her eyes still on Rosalind, she seized Christopher’s arm, pinching the flesh between her nails,
pulling his ear toward her mouth. He leaned over.

“The Russians,”
Ilse hissed.

Rosalind, frowning at Ilse, shielded her pubis with the pistol, a perverse gesture of modesty. Abruptly, she turned and left the room.

“It’s true,” Ilse said to Christopher, whispering rapidly. “He’s going to tell them about me.”

“Tell the Russians about you? Tell them what?”

“About my father. He wasn’t in the Waffen SS, he was in the other SS. He was in charge of a camp in Poland. It’s so terrible to be a German. Our home was in the Soviet Zone; I
come under their jurisdiction. They’ll kill me for what my father did.”

Images flooded into Christopher’s mind: the faces of the women in the camps, dozens of them, who had looked like Lori, each with a black circle drawn around her head. Ilse’s
fingernails dug into the flesh of his arm. He pried her fingers loose and pushed her hand away.

“I can’t help you,” he said.

“For God’s sake, Paul—I was only a child! I was in Switzerland, going to school. I knew nothing. Do you think my parents
told
me what my father was doing in the
camps?”

Christopher was wearing a dressing gown. Ilse slid her hand under the lapel, onto his bare skin. He stepped away from her.

Ilse stared at him in disbelief. “Your father wouldn’t have let this happen to me,” she said.

Christopher didn’t answer her. He went to the telephone and dialed a number. She rushed after him and snatched at the telephone.

“Not Darby,” Ilse said. “Don’t call him.” She was still talking in her urgent whisper. She hung up the phone. “I don’t want help from either of the
bastards,” she said.

She seized the lapels of Christopher’s dressing gown again. He stepped back.

“Then you’d better stay here with Rosalind,” he said. “I’ll try to find Barney. He won’t go to the Russians.”

“You don’t know Barney,” Ilse said. “You don’t know what was between us.”

Rosalind came back, fully clothed, her coat over her arm. Her face was cold and composed.

“Rosalind will stay with you,” Christopher said to Ilse.

“Like hell I will,” Rosalind said. “I heard every word.” She walked out the door.

Christopher found Wolkowicz in the Sewer, sitting in the inner office at Darby’s desk, reading a streamer from one of the decoding machines. He appeared to be perfectly
sober, but then he always did.

“Ilse is at my place,” Christopher said.

“Is she?”

Wolkowicz did not raise his eyes from his reading. Presently he got up and left the room. For the rest of the night he avoided Christopher. Christopher stayed in the Sewer until Darby and
Rosalind came in at dawn. He took Wolkowicz home with him. Wolkowicz knew where the car was going as it passed through the streets leading to Christopher’s apartment house; he sat with the
brim of his hat pulled down over his eyes, battered hands in his coat pockets, saying nothing.

In Christopher’s apartment, they found a note from Ilse; she had gone home to pack; she had decided to go to the States. Christopher called Wolkowicz’s number; there was no answer.
He went to Wolkowicz’s apartment; the porter had not seen her come in.

Wolkowicz’s Austrian driver arrived with a message. In a destroyed street between Christopher’s apartment and her own place, Ilse had been kidnapped from her taxi. A truck had backed
into the taxi and when the driver leaped out to remonstrate, two men had wrenched open the back doors and pulled Ilse into another car.

“She resisted, she was screaming for help,” the taxi driver told Christopher. “She was holding on to my taxi like this, very strong, I thought she was going to pull the door
off the hinges, and when she wouldn’t let go, one of the Russians punched her in the stomach. Then she was limp, yes? So they just stuffed her into their car.”