The Wind Chill Factor (45 page)

“Yes, I do. He was—it’s not an unfitting comparison. Had he served out the war under cover, if he had never been revealed, the family would have remained intact. Perhaps husband, wife, and daughter would have returned to the United States—everyone might have lived more or less happily ever after. But then he was called to Germany to serve the Reich … and the bombs fell on the little family in London. The German agents didn’t know what to do with the little girl. They improvised, got her to Ireland, not an easy task for a couple of spies. …

“So again fate, destiny, call it what you will, takes a hand in the story. It took time for the Nazi command running Edward Cooper’s mission to learn what had happened and they were unable to contact Cooper for advice regarding what should be done with the little girl who was, after all, legally dead in London. Consequently they went ahead, sequestered her. Finally, when Cooper surfaced again upon completion of one of his sorties, he was told of the death of his wife and the curious survival of his little daughter. What happened when he learned the fate of one and the good fortune of the child? I don’t know—I know only that he decided there was no way to care for her himself, that she should instead lead as normal a life as the times would permit and in the country that he himself had chosen. Thus, my dear, you became Lise von Schaumberg and your father made certain that although he would never know his daughter personally he would be kept informed as to your life. He retained the interest of a father but denied himself the joys.”

“Gunter knew my father,” Lise said.

“Of course. He met him when he flew the Channel. He worked with him.”

“Have I ever seen him?”

“No, I think not.”

“Did my father approve of my marriage?”

“He was pleased with your life. He had respect for your husband.”

“Oh, my God,” she said, her fingers clawing at her face, covering her eyes. She threw her head back and forth, sounds issuing but not words, a convulsion of terror and sorrow and disappointment, lost hopes, a forlorn life. Peterson looked at her disinterestedly. As her cries subsided her shoulders heaved, frail and adolescent; she seemed tiny and sad and without hope.

“Until last fall,” Roeschler went on, turning to look at the clock, “everything was going as planned. You and Cyril were utterly uninvolved with any of this. Lise was reasonably content, a confused modern woman perhaps, but no more confused than most. She had no interest in her husband’s political activities, there was no threat at all to the movement. Gunter knew that his marriage was far from perfect but he saw his relationship with you, Lise, as important in two ways—he loved you and he looked upon you as very important in the sense of continuity within the movement. It didn’t matter that you were unaware of your true identity—he
was.
You meant even more to him than a wife. South America was working perfectly; Africa and the Middle East were, if anything, slightly ahead of schedule.”

Peterson said: “Doctor, let me take a crack at this.”

“Don’t dawdle, Mr. Peterson. Time is running out.”

“Fate again, the little grindings of fate—bone on bone. Gunter Brendel goes to the Glasgow Trade Fair to make a deal to market some new scotch in Germany. Christ,” he said, slamming his fist into his palm, “it’s so goddamn beautiful! Fucking, pure, sheer chance—he doesn’t know that Cyril Cooper could have anything to do with some sillyass booze he’s trying to get on the cheap! How could he know? Cyril’s name never appears on anything. So Brendel goes to Glasgow and does he just take a nice, normal business trip? Hell no, he takes his poor confused young wife—she’s depressed, she needs a holiday, what the hell—let’s go to Glasgow, get out of the old rut!” Peterson was dripping with sweat, the grin fierce as the jungle night. “Well, by God, they got out of the rut. Now the next fateful step. Jack Dumfries makes a deal with Alistair Campbell, a nosy, drunken little newspaperman, to have a picture taken of his hotshot German guest, a very nice public relations move by Mr. Dumfries—a shot in the arm for Old Tennis Sock Scotch, a feather in his own cap he can show Cyril, a little ego massage for the kraut. Perfect. And Frau Brendel—she’s a goddamn movie star, gorgeous, let’s get her in the picture, too.

“Fate again! It gets better and better.” He beamed at us, teeth shining behind the bandit’s mustache. “Does Dumfries even know when Cyril Cooper is likely to drop by the Glasgow office? Chance … if Cyril had come a week later, a month later, Dumfries might have forgotten his momentary coup and the newspaper would never have reached Cyril Cooper’s breakfast table. But, by God, Cyril hit Glasgow the day the photograph appeared … and when he looked at it he didn’t see a public relations triumph for Jack Dumfries. Do you know what he saw? Jesus Christ, can you imagine it? He saw his mother!”

Roeschler regarded him with something approaching awe. Lee stared openmouthed. He winked at me.

“So Cyril Cooper went to Germany. What was in his mind? I don’t know. He was presumably innocent of the political convolutions of Gunter Brendel. He just had that photograph and the nugget of an idea. And what harm would it do to simply inquire?

“He contacted you, Lee. He made a nuisance of himself and he knocked the stilts out from under your life. He asked you if you knew for certain who you were … and you decided that just maybe you didn’t. He spoke with you, Doctor, and he got himself run out of town. But he was onto something. God only knows exactly how he put it together, but he listened and he did make sense out of it … he may even have somehow gotten wind of the involvement of your father. Remember that telegram, John, something about the family tree needing some work. After shaking hell out of everybody here, this son of Edward Cooper wound up in Buenos Aires talking to Kottmann and St. John—I’m telling you, he had figured it out!”

“Why didn’t they kill him then?” Lee looked like death, eyes red, face splotched from crying, but it was her life and nothing could have been more important.

Roeschler answered: “Because he was Edward Cooper’s son. Kill him and you would have to answer to someone.”

“So he lit a fire under them in Buenos Aires, sent the telegram to John in Cambridge and John sets out for home. By car. Cyril flies home and goes to the family home in Cooper’s Falls to wait for John’s arrival.” Peterson held up a hand and began to tick the items off, one by one.

“So here comes John across country from the East. Cyril is home waiting on the last night. Two men attack John on the road and leave him for dead … and someone kills Cyril, poisons him. John survives the attack and arrives home the next day or late the next night. Nobody home, so he sleeps in the guesthouse. The next day he finds Cyril Cooper dead—dead about twenty-four hours, murdered right about the time John was arriving home. The murderer was, in fact, probably in the house when John arrived and thought it was empty.

“Somebody, Doctor Roeschler, wasn’t worrying about having to answer to anyone. And they’ve been trying to kill John Cooper ever since … with an incredible incompetence.

“And these were Brendel’s men. There’s no point in going into all that now, but a bunch of them have died recently—”

Roeschler’s eyebrows raised.

“I killed one in London, a man named Keepnews who was one of the two men who waylaid John on the highway. And John himself killed the other one in Cooper’s Falls.” He heaved an immense sigh and went back to lean on the mantle. “All because Lise Brendel was really Lee Cooper—John’s sister, Cyril’s sister. …”

“That’s not quite right,” Roeschler said. “It never made any difference whose sister she was. It was whose daughter she was—that was the problem.”

My sister had dried her tears with the denim shirttail. I saw her tiny naked waist, saw the tremor in her hands. In the silence, she looked up.

“What will happen to me?”

No one knew what to say.

An hour later my sister and I were alone in the room, sitting on the floor staring at the fire. Roeschler had wrapped tape around her rib cage in case there was a hairline fracture. While he wrapped her at the kitchen table, he told us what was going to happen right away, why he had been looking at the clock. Lee sat on the table, naked to the waist, her tiny nipples erect on the small mounds of her breasts as he wound the white tape tight. Her shoulders were held back, her eyes closed, her face set and wounded and very tired.

He told us that he had arranged for our passage to the United States on a commercial flight, connecting from the air terminal in Munich to London, Shannon, and New York. We would be met by “friends” in New York and they would take us the rest of the way. He told us that we really had no choice, that our search for my little sister was finished, that it was time to go home.

“Are you telling us that this is it? It’s all over?” Peterson asked.

“Exactly, Mr. Peterson.” Roeschler looked up from his tape. “And you will do precisely what you are told. Without my help, you are dead men and there will be no incompetence, not anymore.” The smile was gone, the Doctor Roeschler we had known was gone: he was ordering us and Peterson knew it.

Lee shifted before the fire, moaned. The house was quiet. Roeschler and Peterson had retired upstairs to grab a couple hours of sleep. Our plane would leave at seven, with dawn.

“What to do?” I said. The fire had burned low and the sound of the rain and wind came down the chimney.

“You will be home this evening,” she said quietly.

“I meant what about you. All of it, from the time I saw the newspaper photograph in Buenos Aires, all of it has been to find you. I forgot everything else, I forgot about finding whoever killed my brother, I thought only of finding you … seeing you for myself, seeing if you were my sister.”

“You succeeded. I asked you before if it was worth it, I asked you if it made any difference. …” She took a deep, painful breath.

“Is this it, then? I found you. People have died. …”

“My husband and my lover are dead because of you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Of course you are. But you can go back to your old life, you see. I don’t have one, there is nothing waiting for me—unless it’s Alfried Kottmann and his toy soldiers.”

“There’s Roeschler, isn’t there?”

“He will try to keep me from taking too many pills. He will protect me from anyone who wants to hurt me. There are my ballet classes. I can fill my days with the little girls. I will go back to the house in the country where my husband was … executed. The servants will have cleaned up my party, there will be fresh flowers in the vases and in the spring we’ll open the windows and clean the house.”

“Why don’t you come with us?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re a Cooper. Come back with me. To Cooper’s Falls.”

“What in the world for?”

“We would be together. We could get to know each other.”

“John, listen to me. I don’t want to know you any better. Do you hear me? You may think I’m a Cooper, you may want to have me around to get to know me—you may want many things. You wanted to find me, you had to find me at any cost. You got what you wanted. Because of you my life is now barren, I have no one. Not you, not Gunter, not Siegfried, no one. You have demolished my life—no, listen to me. You’ll only hear this once. When you leave here, I will be alone. Try to understand—that’s the way I want it. I don’t want you here, anywhere near me. I don’t hate you; I simply want to forget about you. I won’t ever be able to forget what you and your friend have done to me and to my life but I am a German and I am strong because I have no choice. I have done nothing to regret. You have, if you are at all sane. You live with what you have done to me.

“I won’t help you, I won’t forgive you, I will only try to keep living and rebuild my life. Do you understand me?” I couldn’t answer.

“There is no comfort for you in me. None. You’ve lost a brother. I have lost so much more. …”

“He was your brother, too,” I choked. “Perhaps you actually are insane,” she said calmly. “You call him my brother. He was your brother. He was nothing to me. You are nothing to me. Only something evil that happened. I can survive, I can will my survival, I can recover. I have already begun to recover. Don’t cry. Don’t be so foolish. You’re embarrassing me. Please, help me get up.”

I stood up and took her arm, helped her to her feet. Her face was utterly without expression. She was returning my look, she was standing beside me, but I was alone, as I’d been when we’d lain in bed together. I felt the tears on my face.

“Now, good-bye, John.”

Impulsively, she pulled my head down and I felt her lips on mine, unhurried, passionless, but thoughtful, as if she were making a single concession. I held her shoulders gently so as not to hurt her, kissed her soft dry cheek and her eyes and her hair. Finally she pulled away, slowly, and freed herself completely. There was no smile.

“You should get some sleep,” she said, moving away. “I won’t be awake when you leave.”

She stopped in the doorway to the hall.

“Will you be all right?”

“I should think so. Yes.” She sounded so English, so distant.

I nodded. “Good.”

“Good-bye, John.”

I watched her leave, heard her on the stairs.

“Good-bye, Lee.”

There was no one left to hear me. My sister Lee was gone.

The morning was dark and the rain beat steadily. The snow was almost gone. Water rushed in the gutter. A car waited under the overhang. The headlights shone through the rain; the stone alleyway glistened. I was holding my bag and Peterson was talking to Roeschler. “If he asks for the pills,” Roeschler was saying, “don’t worry about it—just give him one of the yellows. It’ll relax him, let him sleep. About half an hour before you reach New York give him one of the red and green ones, it will pep him up and induce a slight euphoria.” They were talking about me. I felt Roeschler’s hand on my coat sleeve. “You need rest and time to get all of this into perspective. You’ll see—you’ll be amazed at how well you’ll feel after a week’s rest. Now”—he slapped my back gently—“the sooner you’re away the better.” He shook hands with Peterson.

I was thinking about her, somewhere in the house, in her bed, lying awake and shivering in the cold. I thought of what she had said and of what I had done to her and I swallowed against the knot in my throat. “Help her,” I said to him.