Thief of Glory (36 page)

Frozen, I watched from the bridge as the man used a fishhook to search in the water. The canal water was shallow. Johannes could have stood in it. If he was alive. It didn’t take long for the man on the houseboat to snag clothing and pull Johannes to the edge of the boat.

Then he turned the beam squarely on me again, painful against my eyes, and I realized that Pietje was clawing at my face, ripping my skin with jagged fingernails.

In the light of that beam, I grabbed each of Pietje’s frail wrists, needing little strength to hold off my brother’s rage. We could see each other clearly because of the light from the houseboat.

“This is how you solve problems,” Pietje said, his voice flat. “Am I next?”

“No,” I croaked.

“Run,” Pietje said. “Run. I will not protect you from the police. They will hear from me how you killed.”

I found myself in the restaurant again, Laura’s eyes gentle as she tilted her head listening to my story.

“I fled jail,” I said. Pietje died an addict’s death within months of my abandonment. “I thought the solution was to go to America first, then have you join me as soon as possible. I sent letters. And letters.”

She nodded. “At first, I did not receive them,” she said. “My family, and the man I married, I see now, made sure of that.”

“Here, in America,” I said, “I had the freedom to turn my back on the mechanics trade that had been decided for me in Holland. I worked and worked, saving money to go to architect school. That was a dream I did fulfill. But I still waited. So long I waited for an answer, believing that I would always wait. One weekend, in an act of carelessness and weakness, I shamed myself with a secretary from the office that I knew adored me. I married her, because that’s what a man should do. Then waiting was something I could no longer do.”

“I waited too,” Laura said. “You know that. We had promised to meet, and I waited. Each night at the time you had promised and the place you had promised, I waited. Until I could no longer wait. One letter, finally, reached me. A servant was careless, I suppose. I was ready to break my engagement. Then my fiancé told me he had a friend in the police, and that he’d learned something about you but had never wanted to tell me in case it destroyed the image I had of you. He said you’d killed a man and let your brother die of a drug overdose that was likely a suicide. He said that because I was engaged to be married to him, he had wanted to protect me by protecting you.”

Laura gave me a tight smile of sadness. “There were papers I found after my husband’s death. The attorney who arranged for your bail was not from my family, but his. The man you believed had died, did not.”

That hit me with the impact of a hammer. I groaned.

Laura reached for my hand. “When I learned from my husband that he knew you had fled the country for killing a man, I felt a joy that I didn’t dare reveal. You
hadn’t
abandoned me. I love you. What happened on the bridge is nothing that you could have prevented. If you had stayed, any jury would have found you innocent. How I wish it could have been different. But at least we know the truth now. And it’s not too late. For us.”

I trembled. I should have been relieved that I was innocent of murdering a man in a moment of rage. I should have rejoiced that this amazing and wonderful woman had just declared love for me, that we had a chance to begin again. This was the moment to pull the ring from my pocket.

With cruel clarity, and bitter irony, I remembered that I couldn’t remember how to find money to pay the taxi driver. The ring remained in my pocket. I would not propose. For Laura, marriage to me would be like putting her in a prison.

“Rachel is trying to arrange for she and I to meet with Georgie early this afternoon,” I said.

Her brief pause before answering told both of us that the moment had been offered and that I had declined.

“I’m glad to hear that,” Laura said with polite neutrality. “And, of course, I will be hoping for the best for you.”

F
ORTY
-S
IX

As we settled in for the discussion with Wyoming Senator Michael Knight and the attorney who represented him, I doubt Rachel was impressed by the physical setting of the Capitol Hill office where she had insisted on the meeting. Not compared to where she worked.

I’d been in her Century City office, knew exactly what kind of impression it gave to clients, measured in terms of the fee she billed them per hour. The view of the Malibu mountains through the floor-to-ceiling windows from the corner suite on the top floor of the tower; the original artwork on the walls; the photos of her shaking hands with politicians who were high powered enough to be recognizable years—maybe decades—after the posed shots that were the privilege of those who made generous enough campaign donations; the gleaming deep brown of furniture that most assuredly did not come from Ikea.

As a former architect, I could also guess at what it had cost her to give that kind of impression; the infighting and maneuvering with partners, the endless evening hours devoted to her computer, and the lack of family photos anywhere in the office. Her partners could display the warm and fuzzy arms on shoulders of children and spouses, photos that fooled nobody into believing a Beaver Cleaver existence. Rachel was three years, at most, from the expiry of any kind of biological ability to have a child, and she had chosen a career.

I suspected that when a new client was led into her office, with the secretary offering coffee in a china cup, the client would pause and evaluate—whether
consciously or not—exactly what this visit was going to cost. The smart ones knew that whatever they paid, it would be a worthwhile investment. Nobody came to Rachel with simple and easy-to-solve problems. They needed a shark, and most often were sharks themselves.

I was glad she was going to be my shark for this meeting. We had both agreed I wouldn’t speak. It wasn’t the time or place to say what I wanted to say to the senator; nor did I want to reveal any weakness that would be exposed if I was unable to answer a question because of short-term memory loss.

Rachel had told me before the meeting that she hadn’t cared where it would take place.

Instead, she’d wanted to establish control. If they had wanted to meet on Capitol Hill, she would have insisted on the conference room of Knight’s attorney, Justin Davey. Since they’d requested the conference room of Knight’s attorney, her demand had been Capitol Hill.

The senator’s inner suite, like the outer offices where a prune-faced woman had registered our signatures, had a fifties dinginess to it; desks with yellow varnish, dull beige walls long due for fresh paint. It felt Cold War era, complete with photographs of Eisenhower and Nixon. No Democrat presidents, I noted. Wyoming was not a liberal stronghold. For proof, all I needed to see was the portrait-sized photo of Charlton Heston with a hand on the shoulder of a much younger Michael Knight.

Now, the paunch and wrinkles were more developed, the roundness of Knight’s face blurred, and his goatee gray and wispy. Same paisley bow tie, bland suit jacket, and matching pants, as if long ago he’d taken to heart someone’s marketing advice on how to brand a politician.

Knight ignored me. It was like showing contempt to an ant. Boots don’t notice where they step.

He was staring at Rachel with an intensity of one of the hawks that swept
the skies of his home state. I hoped she would not be fooled by the Colonel Sanders charm that Knight obviously put forth as public image.

Knight was probably waiting for her to speak. They had already exchanged the necessary pleasantries that fooled no one. I guessed that Rachel had no intention of breaking the silence. Although she was outnumbered, she wasn’t intimidated; she’d had a lifetime of facing me down.

The silence lengthened.

As to which person in the room would first break this silence, my bet was on Justin Davey, who looked like he was working too hard at rolling back a decade, going with a facial grooming for the French élan that had been in fashion for the Three Musketeers movies back in the eighties, and which I’d seen on a poster for a movie,
Metal Man, Iron Man
, or some name like that. Expensive suit, bad tailoring.

While Knight’s focus was on Rachel’s eyes, I’d caught more than a few glances from Davey at Rachel’s calves and the part of her thigh exposed by how her skirt slid up her legs when she sat. That angered me, but Rachel had told me ahead of time that there was no sense in having a biological weapon unless it was used with art.

Knight coughed, and that broke the staring match.

“Rachel,” Davey said, “the senator is a busy man. Perhaps you could get right to the point of the vague threats you used to set up this meeting?”

He was choosing to ignore me too. Since Rachel had let both of them know ahead of time that I would be with her, he was probably heeding Senator Knight’s instructions.

“Ms. Prins is how I expect to be addressed,” Rachel told Davey, with the scornful coldness reserved for a man who had made an indecent proposal.

I hid my smile. This was going to be a street fight, only Davey didn’t know it.

I’d been in office politics. A response to an aggressive opening gambit like this was typically one of three things: Apology. Or embarrassment. Or aggression in return. It was a gambit that gave her an early chance to rattle her opponent, and a way to get a read on the situation.

Davey surprised me. I’d expected retreat in the form of apology.

Instead, he went with the third option and stood and extended his hand. “I am sorry this meeting won’t continue, Ms. Prins. Neither the senator nor I will be interested in a conversation where you want to play games.”

“Wonderful,” Rachel said, not bothering to stand or accept the offered parting handshake. “Then let’s get right to the charges of attempted murder that I intend to take to the prosecutor later this afternoon.”

I thought that would rattle Davey, but it didn’t.

“As I said,” he told her, “this meeting is over. It is clear by all reports that Senator Knight was defending himself and graciously asked that no charges be pressed against an elderly man who was obviously confused.”

“The attempted murder by Michael Knight took place on January 22 in 1942 and involved a piece of rebar against an unarmed boy. I have a list of surviving witnesses and I am prepared to discuss the situation at a press conference. One of the witnesses, Laura Jansen, is connected by marriage to Dutch royalty, so I expect her credibility won’t be an issue.”

“Nineteen forty-two? That was …” It took Davey long enough to calculate that it exposed a certain lack of quickness. “That was over seventy years ago. You expect any sane prosecutor to—”

“Are you implying I underestimate how the media becomes judge and jury?” Rachel asked. “Think about it. Seventy some years ago, Senator Knight tried to kill the same man he assaulted in the halls of Capitol Hill. I, for one, like that as a sound bite. The Dutch royalty is a nice touch too.”

Rachel opened the top of her file folder. It was her meeting now. “You look
silly standing there,” Rachel said to him. “If the meeting were over, you would have left it at that. Sit down so that it will be less awkward for you when you finally admit you have no leverage here.”

Davey looked to Senator Knight for support.

Rachel put up a finger to halt anything Knight would say. In control and showing it. “In case it isn’t clear, Senator, I am here to talk about a boy named George Michael Smith, and the Wyoming rancher named Bruce Knight that George’s mother married shortly after World War II, and the subsequent adoption of George Smith and the name change that followed. I have details in a comprehensive report put together by a high-profile Hollywood private investigator, if you, or the national press, need them for the record.”

The Hollywood investigator part was nothing but bluff. Still, I was impressed that the senator didn’t glance my way. He must have anticipated something like this; his hawklike observation of her did not change.

“As I understand it,” she continued, much like a comedian who gives an almost imperceptible pause after a punch line and discovers no laughs, “your son is slated to run for your senate seat when you retire in a few months. Is he aware of the place you spent 1942 to 1944, the name of the Japanese commander involved, and what your mother was doing during those years so that both of you would survive? The country is in a patriotic mood, Senator. You and I both know what that means.”

“This meeting is over,” Senator Knight said from his chair, fingers steepled in a thoughtful pose. His voice was deep and calm. Unafraid.

As Davey beamed, Rachel nodded and closed her folder. The aggressive tactic and laying out her aces early was how she’d decided to play it, and I was proud that she wasn’t going to second-guess herself now that it had failed. Or beg for more time with the senator. She’d meant what she said about the press conference, and that was the next step. She’d promised that to me.