There was nothing to do but wait. I settled in on a bench across from the Movenpick ice cream store and watched. So late in the season, most of the Americans had flown home. Some Germans, French, and British remained, but it was mostly a lean, blonde, fit stream of Nordic pedestrians that wandered by.

Ron stayed with me for half an hour, protecting his investment, but he eventually got bored and left. He said he would be back. I doubted it.

I moved with the sun as the hours passed. Just sitting and waiting was chilly, as well as tedious. The fountain in the middle of the grassy area had a quartet of bronze statues of innocent, playful, basically sexless children, getting ready to leap into the fountain for a swim. About eleven o’clock, some real ten year olds actually went wading, but they were Norwegians, and tougher than I was. Seven years in California had spoiled me.

Scores of brown-headed gulls came by to be fed. Young lovers, old men in conference about the world’s troubles, and even a trio of tough looking sailors, kept them happy.

Singly and in small groups the street musicians began gathering as noon approached. Apparently they knew something I didn’t, because about that time groups of overdressed, camera clicking tourists began to wander through. The effluvium of a cruise ship, perhaps? 

I didn’t talk to any of the musicians. There would be time for that if Raven or Eric did not show up. A very talented young flamenco guitarist set up and began to play. Half a dozen of his friends drank beer and talked quietly behind him. An occasional kroner fell into his guitar case, but he wasn’t making expenses.

Down the street, a nine year old kid was playing electric guitar very badly and singing in an untrained voice. He was using a thousand dollars worth of equipment and making a hundred dollars a day on charm and youth instead of talent. The flamenco player was breaking my heart with his music and starving.

A drunk came up and began strumming his beer bottle. He put his arm around the flamenco player; the guitarist cringed, probably singed by hundred horsepower breath. One of the guitar player’s friends tried to lead the drunk away. The drunk was obstinate. Another of the friends came to help and the two of them dragged the drunk off. He resisted, there was a scuffle, and the drunk ended up on the ground. He thrashed around like a beetle while the friends returned, shaking their heads. Then he began wailing. His plaintive voice drowned out the music, and the guitarists had to stop. I was glad he was speaking Norwegian; the sound was irritating enough without understanding the words. Eventually, he staggered to his feet and went off muttering.

The joys of performing.

I looked left and Eric was there, opening up his instrument case. Raven was nowhere in sight. more tomorrow

He was tall and rawboned, with a bushy blond beard, long hair, dressed in jeans and a U-2 tee shirt, with a relaxed and bemused expression that said “American.” He should have been fit and strong; you could tell by his bone structure that he had the genes for it. But he hadn’t done the work, so everything looked soft and toneless.

I walked up to him and said, “I’m Ian Gunn.”

He stuck out his hand and said he was Ron Anders. Of Norwegian ancestry, even though his folks lived in Kentucky now. He had come for the summer, and had taken up with a girl from his home state that played Appalachian dulcimer. That was why he was wandering around with musicians. He couldn’t play a note or carry a tune himself. That was how he had come across the flyer with Raven’s picture on it and why he had been keeping an eye out for her ever since. 

I listened with what patience I could muster. I was afraid that if I stopped his rambling, I might not get him talking again. I needn’t have worried about that.

He had gotten the flyer in Copenhagen, and that was three weeks ago, and he had not seen hide nor hair of Raven from that day until just two days ago when he had seen her here.

“Where? Where exactly did you see her?”

He would show me. But first, he wanted to be sure that he would get the reward. It was important to him. He tried to tell me why, but I couldn’t listen any longer. I gave him my card. I gave him Senator Cabral’s card. I wrote him an IOU that said if he showed me Raven, I would personally see to it that he got his money. He nodded over the paper, then had me sign it, even though it was in my handwriting. Then he folded it carefully and put it into his wallet and said, “Come along this way.”

He led me up Karl Johans Gate north from the train station through a fashionable pedestrians-only walkway. Within half a mile we came to a small park with a large triple fountain beneath columns of young, well kept trees. The grassy strip was a hundred feet wide and a block long, dotted with benches of concrete and steel.

Ron Anders gestured and said, “This is where I saw her. Two nights ago. She was with a guy who played violin.”

“A blonde guy? Well built? Good looking? Hardanger fiddle?”

“Yeah, that sounds like him,” Anders said, “but what kind of fiddle are you talking about?”

I shook my head. “And you call yourself a Norwegian. Was his violin decorated with ink drawings and did it have eight tuning pegs.”

“Man, I don’t know. Who notices things like that?”

Not Ron, certainly. 

It was only eight in the morning. There would not be many street musicians until later in the day, and the best of them might not come out until afternoon. I asked Ron where they were staying.

“I don’t know. I didn’t talk to them.”

No need to ask why. He hadn’t wanted Raven to call Marseilles herself and screw up his chance at the reward money. more tomorrow

Now their eyes were weary, glazed, and often drunken. They sat together in national groups; Americans, or British, or Germans seeking the familiarity of their own kind. No more reaching out to strangers. No more open acceptance. Somewhere along the line, each one had found his own personal disillusionment and nursed his own personal betrayal.

Innocence would not ride the trains again until June returned next year.

*          *          *

Since early May, when West German television had shown Hungarians beginning to remove the fence that lay between their country and Austria, East Germans, smarting from their own stolen election, had been going south on “vacation” and not returning. Now uncounted thousands of East Germans were refugees, scattered all over Hungary. The Honecker government wanted them sent back. Hungary demurred, but had no way to deal with such an influx.

I knew it was a major event, but I didn’t realize how important it would become. I decided if I didn’t find Raven in Innsbruck or Vienna, I would stop in at Budapest to see things for myself.

I never got that far. 

In Innsbruck, I called Will from the train station, while I watched the hikers in their Tyrollean hats and lederhosen waiting for the next train. They brought a smile. Their outfits were outrageous to American eyes, yet they were as genuine for the locals who wore them as Stetsons were in Texas.

“Ian,” Will said as he came to the phone, “they found her. Some tourist saw her in Oslo.”

*          *          *

I could fly out of Innsbruck, but connections were bad. I could take the train to Munich or Vienna to fly to Oslo, but that was get me there at two AM. It made more sense to get back on the next northbound express and take the train all the way.    

At three in the morning, I was awake watching them put the train on the ferry at Helsingor, and at four I was wide awake watching out the window as we rolled up the Swedish coast. A month ago it would have been daylight at this hour, but in mid-August the long days of summer were fading and the long, cold nights of winter were not far ahead.

The last hour coming into Oslo seemed to drag on forever as the train worked its way slowly through the dense sprawl of tracks. I was the first one off the train; swinging along the concrete apron, I could feel the tension jumping in my stomach. Even if Cameron Davis kept his agreement, Raven would not be safe until Susyn was called home.

I rode the slide ramp into Oslo’s Sentralstasjon, crowded with people arriving and departing for every part of Europe. Outside was an open square of cobblestone and marble, surrounded by nineteenth century buildings. Taxis were coming and going; busses waited across the street. In the center of the square was an ultramodern steel and glass clock tower, and beneath it was my contact. more tomorrow

“We? Who is we?”

“Don’t be a fool. Don’t ask what you know won’t be answered.”

Our voices had risen. The driver straightened up and I got a glint of metal as he half drew his pistol. Behind me, Ed would be sighting his rifle. 

Davis waved the driver back. His lips were pulled back from his teeth and his eyes were wild. He made quick, chopping gestures with his hands and hissed, “Fuck it! You want Cabral’s daughter – you’ve got her. She never was anything to me, but my goddamned Susyn tried to get cute and clever and made a bad thing worse. Next time she calls, I’ll bring her home. That’s all I can do.”

“If you call off your dogs, and if Raven comes out of it safely, we will bury what we have on you. If you can’t get to your daughter quick enough, the deal is off.”

“No! If you use that list, Cabral’s daughter is dead.”

It was the best deal I was going to get. I said, “Done.”

“That’s not all!”

I waited. He moved up so close I could smell his sweat. He said, “You are buying safety for Cabral’s daughter. You have no part in the deal. Go set things up with Cabral. Make it real clear, ’cause you aren’t going to be around for long. I give you three days. Then you’re a dead man.”

*          *          *

Cabral stepped down from the truck as I walked up. His face was drawn with worry as he asked, “No deal?”

“He bought the whole package. He’ll call off his troops when Susyn reports in next time. We bury the evidence and Raven goes free.”

Senator Cabral slowly shook his head. “I saw his face through binoculars, Ian. There was more than that. What about you?”

“That’s my problem.”

Chapter Thirty-six

A phone call and some more of the Senator’s money bought me a ticket on the redeye from San Francisco to Paris, a Eurail pass, and a new wad of traveler’s checks. I picked them up three hours later when I dropped the Pinto off at Joe Dias’, and he gave me a ride to the airport.

My backpack was at the embassy, and a call to Marseille told me that none of the flyers Colin McAdam and his friends had circulated had brought any response. Thirty-one hours and nine time zones after Davis had given my death sentence, I was looking out of the train window at the Loire Valley, heading for L’Orient.

Raven wasn’t there. I wandered around for two days, listening to Breton bagpipe bands, and gave it up.

She wasn’t in Amsterdam, or Delft, or Harlem. She wasn’t in West Berlin. I stood in front of the wall thinking of the hundreds who had died trying to cross it, and wondering how long it would stand.

Only months, in fact, but no one knew that then.

She wasn’t in Prague, or Munich. Riding the train south from Munich toward Innsbruck, I knew that the summer was over. Outside there was a haze of brown among the green grasses, but that wasn’t the real clue. I could read the end of things in the faces of the passengers. Kids, mostly, in late teens and early twenties. In June they had been full of promise, with faces bright and full of wonder. Everything they saw was fresh and new; if it wasn’t Omaha, then it must be wonderful. They were ready to laugh at every banal and ordinary thing.

Now their eyes were weary, glazed, and often drunken. more tomorrow

I got my first look at Cameron Davis. There was a family resemblance. He was lean and straw haired, like a more powerful version of Skinny Alan. His eyes were ice blue, and without mercy. For a full minute, he looked at me. If we met in Hell a thousand years from now, he would remember every detail. 

So would I.

He said, “Follow the car,” and motioned. The window went up, and the car went forward. I followed. When I thought I had gone far enough, I stopped. 

It was no longer a matter of rifle range. Davis wasn’t going to shoot me. Not now. There was no need. In his eyes, I was already dead. It was just a matter of choosing the time and place.

I waited, standing calmly as if the sun were not baking my brain. Minutes passed. If he sends his driver again, I thought, we are at an impasse. If he comes himself, it’s a done deal.

The Lincoln started up again and swung a wide arc that brought it into the shade of a tree, about fifty feet closer to where Ed waited. The door opened. Cameron Davis got out and leaned against the side of the car. I walked over and leaned up against it myself, arms crossed, about four feet away from Davis. The young black man stood off thirty feet with his hand inside his windbreaker.

“You could still have a long range mike,” Davis said. “You know, like they use at football games.”

“I don’t.”

“How do I know that?”

“You’re recording this, of course.”

He didn’t reply.

“You don’t have to talk,” I said, “just listen. You probably know part of this story, but you don’t know it all.”

So I told him the whole thing, from his sons’ attack on Raven, to the firebombing of the motel. I told him what I knew, and what I suspected about Harvey Jacks. I didn’t tell him that I had killed his son James. 

“I know you were back of part of this,” I said, “particularly at the end. But I don’t think you were in on the beginning. I don’t think you are that stupid.”

“No, I’m not stupid.”

“Other than that, I’m not asking what part of this business you had a hand in.”

“That’s good,” he said carefully.

“Will you agree that it should never have begun?”

“Of course this is all news to me, but I can say that it appears to have been a mistake from the beginning.”

“And now it can end?”

Suddenly, his mask of civility dropped away. “Do you stand in front of a landslide and shout, ‘Stop!’ Some things, once begun, have to carry through to their conclusion.”

He knew about Venice. I could read it in his face. Susyn must have called him.

There was death between us.

“Can it end for Raven Cabral?”

“Why should it?”

“Because if it does not, we will destroy you. You have the list we sent you. You know we can do it.”

“We? Who is we?” more tomorrow