The Last Supper (35 page)

“I remember. It’s not one of Molly’s songs.”

The waiter brought Wolkowicz’s tea and started to pour it. “Go away,” Wolkowicz said, taking the pot out of his hand. He cut a piece of Gruyère, crushed it on his plate,
and ate the yellow crumbs with a spoon. He was shivering again. His cup rattled in the saucer when he put it down.

Christopher said, “We can go inside.”

“No, we’d better talk outside for now. Before your girl comes back I want to tell you why I came all this way to see you.”

Christopher waited for Wolkowicz to continue. Wolkowicz watched the people at the next table gather up their jackets and hats and mittens. When they had left, he spoke again, in his normal
grating voice.

“I’m all through in Saigon,” he said.

“Why?”

“New assignment in Washington. I’m en route.”

Christopher didn’t ask what the assignment was; Wolkowicz wouldn’t have told him.

“Your buddy Patchen was in Saigon a week or so ago,” Wolkowicz said. “He said nobody is supposed to go near you. There are people in Washington who think you should be locked
up in a mental institution. What did you tell them, for Christ’s sake?”

“That the President was killed in revenge for the assassination of the President of Vietnam.”

“Is
that
all? You
are
crazy.”

“What if it happens to be the truth?”

Wolkowicz exhaled through his teeth. “The truth. The trouble with you is that you think that the truth and reality are the same thing. In this world,
lies
are the reality. People
can’t live without them.”

Wolkowicz, shuddering with cold, lifted the cup to his lips with both hands and drank.

“I know you’ve resigned from the Outfit,” he said. “I know you’re not going to start babbling about your wacky theory to any outsiders, but your pal the Truong toc
doesn’t know that. You’ve covered his family with shit. He wants your ass.”

Molly came out of the hotel, carrying Christopher’s sheepskin coat. Wolkowicz spoke quickly, so as to get the words out before Molly came close enough to hear.

But Molly did overhear.

“What is a Truong toc?” she asked.

Wolkowicz grinned at her. She held the coat open for him and he got up and slid his arms into the sleeves. As he did so, his unbuttoned safari jacket parted and Christopher glimpsed the butt of
his P-38.

“If it wants Paul’s ass,” Molly said, “I really must know what it is.”

“In Vietnam, the Truong toc is head of the family—he represents all the dead members of the family, all the ones who are now living, and all the ones who are yet to be
born.”

“Represents them?”

“Kills people who insult the family honor,” Wolkowicz said. “People like your boyfriend, here.”

“Is it the Truong toc who’s after us, then?” Molly said.

Wolkowicz sat down and huddled inside Christopher’s sheepskin coat. He took Molly’s hand.

“The warmth is back in my bones,” he said. “You saved my life, sweetie pie. I’m never going to forget that.”

“What about the Truong toc?”

Wolkowicz seemed to notice Molly’s beauty for the first time. “He’s not going to forget about you, either,” he said.

To the waiter, who had trailed along after Molly, gazing worshipfully at her body, Wolkowicz said in German, “Bring me some eggs and fried potatoes, quick.”

— 2 —

From the window of their room, Molly and Christopher looked down on the terrace. Wolkowicz, as shapeless as a bear in Christopher’s heavy coat, crouched over a plate of
ham and eggs, a fork in his fist.

“What a thug!” Molly said. “Just what I imagined a spy would be like. You’re a great disappointment to me in that regard, Paul. You wear such humdrum hats.”

Down below, Wolkowicz tore the soft center out of a piece of bread and mopped his plate. “He’s wonderful,” Molly said. “Look! He has the table manners of a Russian
prisoner of war.”

It was taking Molly a long time to pack. Christopher folded her sweaters and put them, one after the other, into the bottom of her suitcase. She turned around and saw what he was doing.
“No, that’s wrong,” she said. She spoke in a fluting headmistress’s voice: “ ‘What is the cardinal rule of packing, girls? Boots, books, and bottles in the
bottom of the box.’ ” She removed the sweaters and began to repack.

“He
is
a spy,” she said. “Don’t deny it. I saw his gun.”

“Don’t be fooled by his act,” Christopher said. “He may talk like a gangster and fake his table manners, but he’s an intelligent man.”

“He
fakes
those table manners?”

“If you don’t pack your box, we’re going to miss the train.”

“Each of your friends is more wonderful than the last,” Molly said. “I had no idea Americans were so interesting.”

They were not alone in the little cog train as it traveled down the mountainside. Three men in drab Swiss business suits, gray with dull orange stripes, sat at the far end of
the car. Wolkowicz’s eyes, glittering under his Tyrolean hat, never left them. Wolkowicz had drunk schnapps with his morning eggs, and his breath smelled of raw alcohol.

Molly held Christopher’s hand, stroking the skin. Wolkowicz watched with a mocking smile on his stubbled lips. Molly intercepted his look.

“It’s the full moon,” she said. “At this altitude, the lunar influence is very strong. It causes tides in the human body.”

Wolkowicz paid no attention to her. The train stopped at one of the way stations and the Swiss businessmen alighted, leaving them alone.

“Excuse us for a minute,” Wolkowicz said to Molly.

He marched Christopher to a seat at the end of the car. They sat facing each other. Wolkowicz leaned forward and pitched his voice so that it could just be heard above the rattle of the
train.

“I’m going to peel off when we get to the valley and leave you and your girl on your own,” Wolkowicz said, “but first I want you to have some information.”

The train passed through a tunnel. Wolkowicz stopped speaking until it emerged into the light again. Molly was still sitting where they had left her, gazing out the window at the windblown
snow.

“We’ve penetrated the Truong toc’s establishment since the last time you were in Saigon,” Wolkowicz said. “Horace got a girl inside who services the old
man.”

Horace Hubbard had become Wolkowicz’s deputy in Saigon.

“Horace,” Wolkowicz said, “gave his little girl a Minox, so she could take pictures of things.”

Wolkowicz unbuttoned the breast pocket of his safari jacket and produced an envelope. He handed it to Christopher. The flap was sealed with Scotch tape. Christopher opened the envelope. Inside
he found a picture of a Western woman, obviously a photograph of a photograph. It had been made in bad light by an amateur. It was grainy and blurred. But Christopher recognized it. The face in the
picture was Molly’s.

“Horace’s agent said they put money on the table to pay for an assassination,” Wolkowicz said. “And lying on the table, all mixed up with the blood money, was this
picture.”

Christopher lifted his eyes. Molly was still looking out the window of the train. After a moment, she felt Christopher’s eyes on her and smiled. Wolkowicz turned in the wooden seat and
followed Christopher’s gaze. He winked at Molly, then looked at her for a long moment longer, a thoughtful expression on his face.

“They want to make you suffer,” Wolkowicz said, looking at Christopher again. “I know you’re not going to let them close to this girl. So what do you want to do, go back
to Vietnam?”

“What else is there to do?”

“I thought so,” Wolkowicz said. “Fucking Jack Armstrong. Can I talk you out of it?”

“No.”

“Where are you going to store her while you’re out there getting yourself killed?”

“In Paris, maybe.”

“With Tom Webster?”

Christopher nodded.

“That should be all right,” Wolkowicz said. “Have you got enough money?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Patchen gave me some back pay.”

Wolkowicz snorted, as if Patchen’s motives were laughably apparent. “It’s nice to have friends,” he said. “I’d take all the money I had with me. When you get
to Saigon, Horace will do what he can to help you, even though nobody is supposed to help you; those are Patchen’s orders. You’ve scared the Outfit shitless with your crazy
ideas.”

“Then why are you helping?”

“Fuck Patchen. Fuck the Outfit. What do they know? One thing you should know. The Truong toc has left Saigon.”

“Where has he gone?”

“Up north somewhere. Check with Horace. You’ll have to fly up there. Don’t, for Christ’s sake, trust
anybody
who isn’t related to you. But here.”

Wolkowicz pressed a slip of paper, about the size of a commemorative postage stamp, into Christopher’s palm. A phone number and the name
Gus
were typed on the paper.

“If you need a pilot, Gus is all right,” Wolkowicz said. “He’s got a nice little airplane and he’ll fly anywhere, anytime. Expensive, but he remembers who paid
him.”

Wolkowicz heard Molly’s footsteps approaching and stopped talking. She had changed into a skirt. Wolkowicz admired her as she walked by, making no effort to hide his interest from
Christopher. Since the loss of Ilse, he treated all women with contempt.

“Beautiful legs,” he said of Molly. “Is she as intelligent as she sounds?”

Christopher nodded.

“Bad combination,” Wolkowicz said.

Molly overheard and turned around. Wolkowicz looked into her face again, as if in deep study. He waggled his fingers at her and she continued on her way.

To Christopher, Wolkowicz said, “You know who she looks like, don’t you? Your mother—her face is right out of that drawing you used to have.”

“I still have it.”

“Hold it up to your girl, then. You’ll see the resemblance.”

The train pulled into the station at Visp. Without another word or gesture, Wolkowicz got up and headed for the door. Molly came out of the lavatory and said something to him. Wolkowicz brushed
by her, adjusting his Tyrolean hat, as if she were a stranger, speaking in a language he had never heard.

For a moment, Molly’s face was lit by a chatoyant smile. Wolkowicz was right: she did look like the Lori in Zaentz’s drawing.

— 3 —

Molly wanted to spend the night in Dijon. There was a hotel there that she liked. It had a one-star restaurant that served duck in orange, her favorite French dish.

“We had such a wonderful duck in Dijon last summer,” Molly said. “Let’s have it again, Paul. That’s my idea of a proper hereafter, to go back in life while
you’re still young and re-create all the good bits, leaving out the nasty stuff like separations and lost jewelry and harsh words.”

“We have to drive on to Paris,” Christopher said. “The Websters are expecting us.”

“I’m in no rush for Paris. It’s such a cold, gray city, and Tom Webster keeps giving me those hangdog looks. You’d think he was your divorced wife and I was the other
woman.”

“If everything goes well on this trip, you’ll never have to stay in Paris again.”

“Of course I won’t. Everything went so well the last time you went to Vietnam.”

They were driving through three or four inches of fresh snow down the western slope of the Jura Mountains. Christopher’s Lancia swerved and skidded. He pulled off the road, got the tire
chains out of the trunk, and put them on.

When he crawled out from under the car, Molly had vanished. The tracks of her boots led down the mountain. Christopher locked the car and followed them. Dusk was beginning to fall and he
hurried, fearing that he might not be able to see the tracks if it became much darker. In the valley below, a few dim yellow lamps were lit in the stone houses. The Angelus struck on a
full-throated church bell. He could just make out the sharp profile of the church steeple. He had driven this way before, and he recognized the village though he could not remember its name.

Molly’s footprints turned off the highway into a forest track. Christopher found her a few meters farther on. She had swept the snow from a rock, and she sat on it, huddled in
Christopher’s sheepskin coat, watching the sunset.

“Do you remember this place?” Molly asked.

Christopher nodded. The June before, they had stopped here and eaten a picnic. “We had that amazing sour pink wine called onion skin,” Molly said.

She spread Christopher’s coat on the rock. “Come,” she said.

“You’ll be cold.”

“No, the air is warm. Look, it’s beginning to snow again.”

A moment later, as Christopher looked down into Molly’s face, she began to weep. She made no sound; the tears glistened on her cheeks and she breathed a little more quickly, in rhythm with
the movement of their bodies. She seemed to be dancing.

“You have such a sweet body,” she said.

In the car, Molly grinned at Christopher. “Saved from freezing,” she said, twisting the mirror toward her and combing her wet hair. “Before you,” she said,
“I’d never made love to someone I loved, really loved. Had you?”

“I thought I had.”

“But
had
you?”

“No.”

“I don’t think I ever will again, do you?”

Christopher, staring into the snow whirling in the headlights of the car, shook his head.

“Good,” said Molly. “Because I’ve been swotting up my sorcery. If you found another girl, even if I were dead, I’d climb into her body, my friend, so that in the
middle of everything you’d say, ‘Hello! What’s this? Something familiar here. Hold on, it’s Molly!’ ”

“What about the other girl?”

“I’d strike her frigid. No satisfaction in it for her at all.”

“None?”

“That is rather hard on her, isn’t it? I’d pretend to be asleep once a month—let her have you. What’s the harm in your having a bit of a change so long as I
don’t know it?”

— 4 —

The Websters’ apartment on the avenue Hoche had a row of high windows on a courtyard. In midafternoon, the weak winter light of Paris seeped into the salon.

“Blinding, the sun of Paris, isn’t it?” said Sybille Webster. “At high noon, you can almost make out the features of the people on the other side of the room.”