The Rendezvous

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The Rendezvous

Evelyn Anthony

To Betty and Desmond, with love

AUTHOR'S NOTE

So much, both fictional and otherwise, has been written about the methods employed by the Gestapo in interrogation that it hardly seems necessary to say that the details in this book are authentic, but I must explain that the fourth floor referred to as the interrogation centre in the Avenue Foch was in fact located in the Rue des Saussaies. I have taken the liberty of amalgamating the two places. The practice of therapeutic amnesia is comparatively new to Western psychiatric medicine, but has long been used in the Soviet Union for political purposes.

Israeli Intelligence operates in the United States, and is reputed to have its nerve centre in New York itself. In 1966 two former members of the German S.S. were reported to have been executed by the Israelis in Madrid and Buenos Aires respectively for crimes committed against the Jewish people during the last war.

EVELYN ANTHONY

London 1966

1

‘Darling. Darling, wake up.' She leant over him, thought of kissing him to wake him and then decided not to; he was always irritable when he woke up, however successfully they had made love. He didn't like to be caressed or teased. He opened his eyes slowly and they focused on her face. ‘Hi,' she said, smiling at him. ‘It's nearly five.' He looked at his watch and sat up, throwing off the sheet. He had a lean and splendid body and he kept it in top condition. He was a very disciplined man, and Julia liked this; it was part of what made him different from her two husbands, both flabby, rich and easy to despise. You couldn't despise Karl Amstat even if you did have a million dollars. Foreigners had this strength, this masculinity; you were a woman and treated like a woman. You just didn't take liberties or they weren't around any more. Julia had come to like this aspect of her lover too. He had the upper hand, and she knew it and accepted it. Otherwise she wouldn't keep him; it was as simple as that.

‘I'm going to take a shower,' he said. He smiled at her over his shoulder. ‘I know what you're like when you get to the bathroom first. You'll be in there for hours.'

‘You're so selfish,' she said. ‘I just don't know why I put up with you. I'm going to mix myself a drink.' She got up and draped herself in a long chiffon négligée; it was just like a piece of rag when it wasn't being worn, and it had cost two hundred dollars. She covered herself in it, and brushed her hair, watching herself in the mirror. She looked good, very good indeed. She was thirty-one and beautiful, as well as rich and well connected. She had everything, including a lover who never said he loved her, and went into the bathroom first. She laughed out loud at herself in the glass and went into the lounge to find a drink. She was very happy.

He locked the bathroom door and went under the shower. He was irritated that his mistress wanted a drink before six o'clock. Five, and just out of bed, and straight to the liquor cupboard. He disapproved and she knew it, but he wasn't going to say anything to her. They were very comfortable together; he was proud of her because she was beautiful and she had brought him a lot of clients, rich people like herself, who wanted him to design a new summer place down on the coast, or build them houses where they could spend holidays, till they got bored and took off for somewhere else. He was very successful as an architect. His serious work was designing new office blocks and in fact this was where the money was. Julia's friends were useful for another reason. They provided him with a background – additional cover was a better way of describing it. He had a niche in New York now. After only six years he was part of the scene; people knew him or of him. Karl Amstat, the architect. He went to the mirror and looked at himself; he combed his blond hair flat, and studied himself very carefully. He hadn't changed much; he had dropped all the old tricks like growing a moustache or wearing glasses. In a way his good looks had been an asset. It was much easier to blend into the scene when you had regular features that could be altered by changing your hair colour, almost impossible if you had a big nose or were short-sighted. Now he just looked like himself, only twenty years older, and at last he felt able to relax. They would never find him now.

Julia wanted to marry him. He smiled when he thought of that. It had been awkward refusing her to start with; she was very persistent, like all American women who were used to having their own way. She couldn't understand why he wouldn't marry her. She said she loved him and he couldn't quarrel with that; he wasn't sure what she meant by love, because it was a word she and her friends were always using, indiscriminately. They just loved a show they'd seen, or a new apartment decorated by some smart pansy, or a new man they'd met, or a bloody dog, come to that. She loved him, she said. She wanted to marry him, and she brought it up every few months, casually, as if she didn't really care one way or the other. Once or twice he had felt tempted to say ‘Yes'. Yes of course I'll marry you, but first there's a little something you should know.…

Amstat had been very lonely for the first year. He had got a job in an architect's office, but nobody bothered to make friends with him. Without money or contacts New York was a cold place to live. It had been a slow process and he had been miserable. When the luck changed, it changed with typical New York speed. He got a commission to do a design for an out-of-town factory. That building made him. He left the firm and set up on his own, and the commissions came with a rush. He had money and he found he had friends too. The two went together, and he had been long enough in New York to accept that without undue cynicism. He had met Julia Adams at a party. She was very smart, wearing something that looked like nothing and was still different to the clothes the other women wore. She had lovely jewellery and a beautiful face, expertly made up, and he had found himself taking her out to dinner. The second time they met he went back to her apartment and they went to bed together. He had had women over the years, but they were mostly tarts and once or twice a girl he had picked up who wasn't a prostitute, though he always treated them as if they were. For nearly twenty years he had avoided any kind of intimacy with anyone.

Julia had been the beginning of his new life. He had begun to enjoy himself; she gave him confidence and he relaxed. He would have liked to marry her. She had even said, very unwillingly, that if he wanted it, she'd have a child. He liked her, and he could keep the upper hand with her; she was marvellous in bed and he couldn't think what more they needed to be happy. But he couldn't do it. He couldn't ever get that close to anyone – she had started asking why he didn't take out American citizenship, and that had clinched it. Papers, investigations, questions. He would have to be alone for as long as he lived. And he was lucky even so.

She was only half an hour in the bathroom; he was already dressed and reading the evening papers. ‘Karl?' She was calling from the bedroom.

‘Yes? What is it?'

‘Bring me a Scotch-and-soda, darling.'

‘No. You've had one already. Drinking gives you lines.'

‘Oh God, you are hell. You know it worries me if you say that. I haven't got lines, have I?'

‘You will have, if you drink this early in the evening.'

She came out of the bedroom and he put the paper down. ‘What do I look like?'

She wore a yellow silk dress and a big diamond brooch on one shoulder. The colour suited her; she had very dark hair and brown eyes. ‘You look beautiful,' Amstat said. ‘Where are we going?'

She came and sat beside him and lit a cigarette. ‘If I tell you, you'll say no.'

‘Probably. But try me, anyway.'

‘Do you really think I'm beautiful?'

‘Yes.' He smiled at her. She was very nice, and he liked her. He took hold of her hand and held it. ‘Tell me where we're going that I won't want to go.'

‘It's a cocktail party.'

‘Oh God, no! I can't stand those awful parties – Julia, you know how I hate them. Crowds of people, nowhere to sit – who's giving it?'

‘Ruth Bradford Hilton. She's just got back from a trip to India, and she's got a divine new husband. This party's to introduce him round. Darling, you'll love her, she's divine, and he sounds divine too. I haven't seen her for ages – she went round the world after her divorce and then she met this guy in Italy and then they went to India. I'm going anyway, but I do want you to come with me. Besides, darling, the Bradfords are very important people in New York. You ought to meet them. She says her brother and his wife will be there. They've taken an apartment in New York, usually they live in Boston; he's Robert Bradford the Third. They've got a house in the Bahamas, a place in Florida – honey, they're loaded! Haven't you heard of them?'

‘No,' he said. ‘I haven't. But I'm only a poor humble foreigner. I'm not an authority on your American dollar dynasties.'

‘Then you should be,' Julia said. ‘It's where you get your living. It's six-forty – I want to get there early and talk to Ruth. Come on, darling. Just for me. I need a handsome man to take me around.'

‘All right,' he said. ‘But we're not staying too long.'

‘Just an hour,' Julia said. Once they were there it wouldn't matter. She wanted to show Ruth what she'd picked up for herself right in the middle of New York. He really was divine, and she was never going to let him go.

The Bradford Hiltons' apartment was on Park Avenue, eighteen floors up. They could hear the noise of the party coming up in the elevator, and Amstat looked at Julia and winced.

They went into the crush, Julia pushing ahead, stopping for a moment to shout at someone she knew and then pushing on. He followed her because he didn't see anyone he knew and there was nothing else to do.