The Clairvoyant Countess Read online

  Pruden stood and thought about this. Madame Karitska had said “an original mind,” and now he understood at last what she had meant. For the first time he accepted the fact that Arturo Mendez had actually been murdered and that Luis Mendez was in the process of being murdered. Not a finger had been laid on them, but here in this room a man had so clearly understood them and so accurately appraised their fears that he could manipulate their deaths without knowing anything but their history and their culture, and without ever meeting them.

  “Clever,” he thought, but he knew this word only concealed his unease. It was the potential behind it that disturbed him, it was the troubling sense that if this could happen to two happy, uncomplicated men, then possibly one day in the future it could reach out to him and to others.

  He was lost in these thoughts when a voice spoke nearby, a voice oddly calm and almost tender. “Good evening. You realize of course, sir, that you are trespassing?”

  Pruden swung around to see Ramon standing in the doorway; he had entered without a sound and stood smiling at him.

  “Yes,” said Pruden.

  “I should, of course, be indignant or alarmed but I never waste energy on unnecessary emotion,” Ramon said, the soft light glittering across the lenses of his glasses and rendering them opaque. “And I’m sure you have some suitable explanation.” Was there a touch of irony in his voice? “In the meantime I’m certain we can find some practical and pragmatic solution to this confrontation if we use judgment and frankness. I’ve seen you before, haven’t I? You were in my shop yesterday.”

  Pruden nodded.

  “And now you are seeing what I like to think is a modern alchemist’s laboratory.”

  The important thing, Pruden realized, was to stall for time. Swope would know what to do, Swope had seen him disappear, and thank God he’d not come alone. Calls would be going out, patrol cars rerouted, a strategy plotted. Don’t rock the boat, he told himself, keep it light, keep him talking. “You’re a student of the occult, I see.”

  Ramon laughed. “A master. How do you like my little study?”

  “A bit weird,” Pruden acknowledged. “Unusual, certainly.” He could feel Ramon’s eyes on him and it was an uncomfortable feeling because he couldn’t see the man’s eyes and this was even more disquieting.

  “I may inquire your name, sir?” Such a gentle voice!

  “Pruden.”

  “Ah yes. Actually, Mr. Pruden, I am a scholar and inventor. At the moment I am consultant to a group that is very interested in my research, which is highly specialized, and they are willing to pay me astronomic sums for certain research studies I’ve done. Absurd, of course, but I have an IQ of over two hundred, which more than makes up for the fact that I am small, almost deformed in appearance, and nearly blind.” He said this softly, his eyes rooted on Pruden as he waited for his response.

  “Oh?” said Pruden equally softly, and asked in a neutral voice, “And do you use your—er—research—for good or evil?”

  Ramon chuckled. “A conventional question, Mr. Pruden. Power is so often used for evil, is it not? I believe it was Lord Acton who said, ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ ”

  “What kind of power?” asked Pruden, and decided that he must stop thinking of Swope because he had the uncanny feeling that those opaque eyes could read his mind.

  “Power to destroy people.” Ramon chuckled. “I could destroy you, Mr. Pruden, very easily, in less than two days. Consider that a compliment, by the way, because most people I could reduce to nothingness in hours, without violence.”

  “Forgive me if I’m skeptical,” Pruden said.

  “Oh, I can assure you it’s quite possible, and entirely without physical violence of any kind. Every human being has his Achilles’ heel psychologically, you see, his own self-image that he nurtures. It would take a little time to discover yours, Mr. Pruden, but you have one. Everyone does. Disturb that image, which is like the skin of a balloon, and following the loud bang there is—why, nothing at all. Or madness,” he conceded modestly.

  “You use drugs, of course,” Pruden said harshly.

  Ramon looked shocked. “My dear sir, you miss the point entirely. Of course not. You are a completely conditioned animal, Mr. Pruden, composed of habit, other people’s valuations, other people’s ideas, opinions, and reactions. What do you have that is yours, untouched by others? Very little. It is more likely that you have no center at all. Human beings are eternally fragmented and highly susceptible to a breakdown of the ego. Statistically, my dear sir, only one man in twenty is a leader, with the capabilities and strengths of a leader. The rest are sheep. The Chinese know this. The North Koreans discovered it for themselves when they brainwashed their captives in the fifties. Destroy that one man and the others prove no problem at all. Almost all human beings are machines, Mr. Pruden. Sleepwalkers without consciousness.”

  “Sleepwalkers,” repeated Pruden, recognizing the phrase.

  “But I think we waste time talking here,” Ramon confessed with a benevolent smile. “Frankly, a small conference becomes necessary with my employees while we discuss how to solve this unexpected situation. I have never,” he added with a disarming smile, “entertained a trespasser before.”

  “I suppose not,” said Pruden.

  “I would suggest that you wait in the next room while I discuss this with them. If you would be so kind—”

  Pruden shrugged. “I don’t mind.”

  “Good. The door is behind that scarlet curtain over there. You’ll find cigarettes there, and a small bar. It’s my living room—I can assure you I am quite civilized.” Ramon walked to the curtain and drew it aside, exposing an oak door. He opened it, and flicked on the lights. “There is no trickery here, as you can see. We will keep this very brief, Mr. Pruden, with as little suspense for you as possible.”

  “Yes,” said Pruden politely, and wondered if in passing Ramon he could get close enough to reach him but he discovered that the idea of grappling with the man filled him with ennui. He felt curiously tired, sapped of his usual energy. Anyway it had to be time for Swope, he thought. Surely now, surely any minute?

  He entered a large room furnished with low couches and tables. There were no windows; instead the walls were hung with soft antique tapestries and fabric, while in the very center of the room a massive Buddha sat smiling down at him. On shelves to his right, behind glass, he saw Chinese porcelains and pieces of jade that could easily have come from a museum. It was all amazing, he thought, a sybaritic underground pied-à-terre. The theme of the room was oriental, soothing and unusual, the motif established by the Buddha, which was taller than he was, carved out of wood—teak, he realized, approaching it with curiosity—and colored with dabs of blue and red.

  Abruptly he stopped, thinking Buddha.

  Blue and red Buddha.

  Madame Karitska … Buddha … danger from behind …

  Pruden whirled just as Ramon fired the gun with a look of hatred and contempt distorting his face. The bullet caught Pruden sideways, he felt a stab of pain radiating through his chest, intense, grinding, unbearable pain and then he slumped to the floor and darkness crashed over him in waves.

  Hours, days, weeks later Pruden opened his eyes to a bright ceiling and a feeling of dull uneasy discomfort. Slowly his eyes focused on a bouquet of yellow flowers and he thought, Somewhere between then and now I died. Beyond the flowers he saw a face that struck him as comical but also vaguely familiar: a deeply tanned face with a bristling white mustache and vivid blue eyes. The face rose and drifted nearer. “You’re awake,” it said. “I’ll call the nurse.”

  “Who,” began Pruden.

  “Faber-Jones,” the voice said. “We’ve been taking turns sitting with you, Madame Karitska and I.”

  “Karitska,” repeated Pruden, and then as it all came back he said, “There was a Buddha. Tell her there was a Buddha.”

  “Right,” said the voice, and vanished.

  “A
Buddha,” Pruden told the nurse when she appeared in starched white cap. “There was a Buddha.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant, but take these capsules now.… You’ve been very, very ill, we nearly lost you.”

  When he swam back to consciousness again the ceiling was dark and the room was in shadow except for one light on a table. Next to the table sat Swope, wearing a rakish white hat.

  “Yes, it’s me, Lieutenant,” Swope said, looking up from a magazine.

  “What the hell,” said Pruden, staring, “Hat?”

  “Hat! This is no hat, it’s a bandage,” Swope growled. I just got out of the hospital five days ago and I’ve got to wear this damn thing until Friday when the last stitches come out. We’ve both been out of action, Lieutenant, but you gave us a real scare. You’ve been here two weeks.”

  This galvanized Pruden. “How long?”

  “Surgery,” Swope said, nodding. “Bullet near your heart. Top man in the country took you apart and put you together again. A quarter of an inch closer and it would have been curtains.”

  Pruden frowned. “It was in the popsicles,” he said abruptly.

  Swope nodded. “If you’re able to remember how it started I’ll tell you how it ended. After you disappeared down that elevator I phoned in a ten-thirteen to headquarters and ran back to find you, except they were waiting for me. Damn near killed me, too. I was unconscious when the Chief got there so it took a while for them to realize you were in trouble too, and then they had to get a search warrant. That’s what slowed things up. You don’t have to worry about the popsicles, though, they made a clean sweep. The drugs came up from South America in the masks Ramon sold. Came in by truck, went out in popsicles.”

  A nurse came in and stopped Swope from saying any more. “We don’t want to tire him now, do we?”

  Pruden loathed her cheerful voice but was nevertheless grateful and immediately fell asleep. When he awoke again his head was clear for the first time and he felt almost himself again. It was late morning, and in the chair beside his bed sat Madame Karitska.

  “Well,” he said, looking at her.

  “Well,” she returned, her eyes twinkling at him. “You are quite a hero, Lieutenant, I actually went out and bought newspapers to read about you.”

  “I met your Buddha, too, you know.”

  “So Mr. Faber-Jones told me yesterday,” she said, nodding. “I am not surprised. That Mr. Ramon—” She shook her head. “Sometime when you are better I shall tell you what I saw in him. Never,” she said simply, “have I felt such evil in a man, or encountered such power, such brilliance or such a twisted soul.”

  “He was like you,” Pruden said in a wondering voice. “I mean, he spoke of the same things you do but he had it all twisted, he’d turned it upside down. He knew.”

  “Knew?”

  Pruden shivered. “Motives. Weaknesses. People. Most of all people, I think. How to bend and destroy them.”

  “Satanic,” said Madame Karitska, nodding, “but let us not speak of him today, for the sun is shining and you are alive and I have good news for you.”

  “Good. What is it?”

  “The willow tree has died,” she said. “It died quite suddenly the morning after you were shot, and Luis is back at work driving his ice-cream truck. As a matter of fact he plans one day to come in personally to thank you, and for this he is learning a speech in English.”

  “Well, now,” he said, pleased, “I’m certainly glad to hear that. In fact if you—” But Pruden’s eyes had wandered to the window and he was abruptly silent. Someone had moved the yellow flowers to the window sill, where they were capturing the morning’s brilliant sunshine in their petals and creating a blaze of gold. He thought he had never seen such color in his life, nor really looked at a flower before, and he could feel tears rising to his eyes at the impact of their beauty. A simple bouquet of daffodils in a white pottery vase … He had always assumed white was colorless but in the snow-like pottery he could trace reflections of yellow, and one tender blue shadow that exactly matched the blue of the sky beyond the flowers. “My God,” he said in astonishment, “I’m alive. I don’t think I ever understood before what it means.”

  “Ah,” said Madame Karitska.

  “Those flowers. Did you notice them, do you see the sun in them?”

  “Tell me,” she said, watching him closely.

  “They’re alive, too, in the most incredible—” He stopped, his voice unsteady. “I sound like a nut.”

  She shook her head. Very softly she said, “I think the patterns in the kaleidoscope have shifted a little for you, my dear Lieutenant. You have heard the expression that to nearly lose your life is to find it? You will be changed, perhaps. Aware.”

  “Is that what life is?”

  “It is what it can be,” she said, “Seeing, really seeing, and then at last—at last the understanding.” She rose and picked up her purse and smiled down at him. “As the French say, ‘One must draw back in order to leap the better.’ My French grows rusty, how do they phrase it? ‘Il faut reculer pour mieux sauter.’ Rest well, my friend, I will see you again tomorrow.”

  Chapter 11

  While Lieutenant Pruden was in the hospital fighting for his life Madame Karitska and Mr. Faber-Jones became, surprisingly, rather good friends. He arrived one evening at her apartment to announce that he had grown intolerably bored with his attempts to escape clairvoyance. “My wife left me last week,” he said, standing in the doorway and refusing to sit down until he had made his confession. “I’m drinking too much and I’ve come to realize that I’m nothing but a selfish, shallow, egotistical stuffed shirt.”

  “Good,” said Madame Karitska promptly.

  “Good?”

  Smiling, she said, “You are suffering from a severe case of creative discontent, my dear Mr. Faber-Jones. How else do you think people can look for something new unless they become thoroughly oppressed and sated by the old? This is very promising.”

  “It doesn’t feel promising,” he said miserably. “It hurts. Can you suggest anything at all?”

  “But of course,” she told him. “You can begin by coming with me to the hospital to sit with Lieutenant Pruden. His father isn’t well enough to go frequently and I feel someone should be with him as much as possible.”

  “That’s all?”

  He was so clearly disappointed in her that Madame Karitska laughed. “You would prefer something more dramatic, like work among the lepers, or giving all your money to the poor? Do not be disappointed, Mr. Faber-Jones, that too could be asked of you one day but not now, I assure you.”

  Faber-Jones was an eminently practical man, and for the moment a depleted one; he accepted Madame Karitska’s prescription without further protest. After one visit, and learning how near death Pruden had been, he suggested with surprising humility that he take turns with Madame Karitska at the hospital. Out of the hours spent quietly at Pruden’s bedside Mr. Faber-Jones received something in return: he arrived at several decisions which he put into action at once. He placed his Cavendish Square house on the market for sale, moved into a nearby apartment, and granted his wife a very generous separation allowance.

  “Do you love her?” asked Madame Karitska curiously.

  “Actually yes, very much,” he said. “Does that sound odd from an old duffer like me? I’ve given her everything except myself, though, and I can’t blame her for leaving. She doesn’t want a divorce—she said so—and that leaves me with some hope.”

  “One must always have hope,” Madame Karitska agreed, nodding.

  “I’ve also decided to give a dinner party,” he told her, brightening. “A new sort of dinner party, to christen my new apartment and new life. Will you come?”

  “I shall look forward to it,” she promised him, and on the night before Pruden was to be discharged from the hospital she presented herself at Faber-Jones’ door, looking splendid in damask brocade.

  He had invited four other guests, three men and a woman. Dr. Jane Tennis
on was a striking woman of about forty, blond and deeply tanned; she was an archaeologist, a childhood friend of Faber-Jones’ and on easy terms with him. There was Peter Zoehfeld, a heavily bearded, distinguished-looking man from the United Nations. “Met him only two weeks ago,” chuckled Faber-Jones. “Day I went to New York on business. We were both caught in a subway fire and stuck underground for two hours.”

  “Nothing,” said Zoehfeld with a charming smile and a flash of dark eyes, “breaks down barriers faster than a soupçon of danger. I am delighted to meet you, Madame Karitska. My friend Mr. Faber-Jones told me I would find you a fascinating woman but he neglected to mention your beauty.”

  Madame Karitska gave him an amused second glance before moving on.

  “And this is Dr. Berkowitz, our family medical doctor,” continued Faber-Jones.

  Dr. Berkowitz was a small, rather nondescript man in a baggy gray suit. His smile was genuine and warm, however, and his handshake firm; she thought he must be a very good doctor.

  “And Lucas Johns,” concluded Faber-Jones. “Used to be in the recording business, now he manages rock stars.”

  “Oh, do you handle John Painter?” asked Madame Karitska.

  Mr. Johns grinned. He was perhaps fifty, with a superb mane of gray hair, very tousled, and he was wearing a fringed buckskin shirt over suede slacks. “No, but I wish I did.”

  “He’s been tremendously helpful,” put in Faber-Jones. “Didn’t have to be, either. Very generous man.”

  “Well, don’t let it get around, Jonesy,” said Lucas Johns, making a face.

  They sat down to a magnificent dinner, for although Faber-Jones had stripped himself of many of the accouterments of his past he had kept his cook and the cook’s husband, who served dinner. The conversation was typical of dinner parties attended by people who had never met before: it was exploratory, impersonal, and of necessity superficial, but in this case very intelligent. Dr. Tennison talked with enthusiasm of her latest archaeological expedition. Dr. Berkowitz had recently visited the Middle East on his vacation, and he and Madame Karitska compared impressions of Afghanistan, where she had lived at one time. At the other end of the table Peter Zoehfeld talked to Lucas Johns of famines and world food shortages.