It was a flat, crude, and ugly automatic, with a five pointed star cast into the rubber handle. It looked like an early Browning, but the markings were not in English. I pulled the magazine and popped out a round. As I had suspected: 7.62 mm. – a metric way of saying .30 caliber. It was a Russian Tokarev. The fast little bullet would penetrate well but it didn’t have the stopping power of a .45, or even of a 9 mm. Back in West Berlin, when I was in the Army, I had shot one a few times and had not been impressed. It was clear that Susyn’s henchman had picked it up on the black market after arriving in Europe.

Worst of all, there were only three rounds. I emptied the magazine and dry fired it, then put it back together. I didn’t trust the safety, so I left the chamber empty. It would only take a second to rack the slide when I needed it.

If I got to Raven before Susyn or Alan.

I tried to put that out of my mind. I went back to my seat and stared at the barren lunar landscape of Norwegian mountains as the train strained its way upward. Soon Raven would be safe. There was no other way to look at it. Soon she would be safe. I set those lyrics to the silent music rattling around in my head, keeping time with the sound of the train. Safe. Soon. The alternative was unthinkable. 

*          *          *

The line from Oslo to Bergen runs over brutal, gray, granite mountains where heavy snow pack stays into July. Well toward the coast, Myrdal is a way station where a secondary line snakes its way precipitously down into a deep fjord to the village of Flam. The scenery on that descent is spectacular, and the run to the bottom is a favorite with knowledgeable tourists. Eric had said that Raven planned to take it, then go on to Bergen.

Myrdal itself was little more than a train station and restaurant. I showed Raven’s picture to the railway officials but hundreds of tourists pass through each day. They did not remember her. I checked my pack and picked up a map. The train down to Flam was powerful and short, with light excursion coaches. There was a trail down as well. Many tourists walked down, then rode the train back up. Few walked both ways.

If Raven had taken the train down and up, she was probably in Bergen already. Take the train down, walk down, go on to Bergen – hard choices. If Ed were here, or Will, or even if I had recruited Eric, then I could leave someone here to watch for her if we missed each other.

Then I cursed myself. I had money – Senator Cabral’s money – so there was no need to act alone. I scanned the faces on the platform and selected a likely looking couple. They were Danish, they spoke English, and they would be glad to earn a hundred American dollars for a couple of hours work. I peeled two fifty dollar traveler’s checks out of my stash and gave them one of the xerox pictures of Raven. I wrote a hurried note to Raven explaining the situation and telling her to stay in the station until I returned.

The little train was groaning and whistling as the conductor hurried the last passengers. It was already moving when I swung aboard. more tomorrow

I had seen that look before. Not often, thank God, but you don’t forget what someone looks like the moment he is about to kill you.

When I saw his eyes, my hands were already at his chest. I slid them in, drove my fingers into his armpits and my thumbs into his chest, where the pecs run under the deltoids, pinching like I wanted to tear his armpits out. His face went gray with pain and I slammed my forehead into his nose. Then I threw him off and scrambled back. He was holding a knife, but his fingers had gone lax. I jerked it free and threw it down the alley.

A couple of tourists went scurrying by, looking carefully away. No one else was in sight.

I caught him in the armpits again and jerked him to his feet.  I threw him toward the back of the alley and followed him in.

He threw a looping right. I took it, knocked him down, then grabbed him again. There was a cross alley, just a ten foot square brick alcove, out of sight of the street. I threw him back into it.

He staggered up, and I slammed him back against the bricks. I put my forearm across his throat and said, “Where is she?”

“Who?” he sputtered.

“Susyn Davis. The one who hired you.”

“I don’t know, man!”

“I don’t know, man! With that God damned California accent. She brought you with her. Listen, you little bastard, you’d better talk quick or you’ll wish you were back in California.”

“I don’t know nothin’.”

“Not good enough!” I hit him in the ribs. Some broke. “You’d better talk quick or you’ll never live to get back to California.”

He spat in my face. I broke some more ribs. His eyes rolled back into his head and for a moment I thought I’d lost him. Then he swam back up to consciousness and I was still there, staring into his face like a vision of his own death. I said, “Where is she?”

“Murtle. Maidol. Something like that. I didn’t catch the name real good.”

“What were you supposed to do?”

He looked at me with his last ounce of defiance and said, “Kill you! She wants you dead.” Then his body turned to rubber.

I eased him down. He was badly hurt. Broken nose, broken ribs, internal damage. I had been well and truly pissed. I shook my head, and said, “It runs in the family.”

**********

Well and truly. Hemingway said those words first and often, and now every male author has to use them, in homage or in defiance. Well, here’s my version.

**********

Chapter Thirty-seven

A train for Bergen left the station at 1343. I made it by minutes.  A train had left at 0813, and another at 1131. Raven would have taken the first one. Susyn or Alan – or both – had probably been on the other.

I waited until the train was well on its way, then made my way to the toilet. Susyn’s henchman had had a gun stuffed inside his shirt, but he had never had time to get it out. I needed privacy to examine it. more tomorrow

Eric was there, opening up his instrument case. Raven was nowhere in sight.

When I walked up, he looked puzzled. He knew he should know me, but I was out of context. I said, “Where is Raven?”

Then he remembered. “You are – Gunn. What is your first name?”

“Ian.”

“Why is it you want to know?”

“I have been looking for her since the two of you took off. She is in danger. You ought to know that much. She certainly told you some of what happened.”

He nodded.

“I know some things now that she needs to know, in order to find safety. I need to talk to her.”

“You want her back?”

His accent gave him a kind of lisp. I had noticed in Paris how it added to his air of boyish innocence. It had irritated the hell out of me at the time. It still did.

“Of course, I want her back. Who wouldn’t? But that isn’t what this is about.”

“Isn’t it?”

That was a good question, but not a timely one.

“Let Raven decide who she goes with. She will anyway. What you or I want doesn’t have a damned thing to do with it.”

“This is true. Gud, is this true.”

He took up his fiddle and bow, struck a chord, and adjusted a tuning peg. I gave him time to decide. As long as he decided right. Otherwise, I was out of patience with this blonde, good looking – pasty boy. Daniel Cabral’s phrase was so right for the Erics of this world.

He lowered his instrument and said, “She left early this morning. She wanted to stop at Myrdal and ride the train down to see the fjord, then go on to Bergen for the night.”

“Without you?”

Eric looked at me with pain. “Without me,” he said, “and soon everything she does will be without me. I can see the preparation for her leaving every time I look in her eyes.”

I said, “I know the feeling.”

*          *          *

I was in a rush. It isn’t an excuse, just a fact. I knew that Cameron Davis wanted me dead, but he was half a world away. I knew Susyn was here in Europe and wanted Raven dead.

I forgot she wanted me dead, too.

I had left Eric to his music and started back toward the train station. So far I had seen about four blocks of Oslo and it looked like that would be all I would get to see. I didn’t want to miss the next train, so I was walking fast and thinking about running.

What I ran into was trouble.

It was neatly done. I was rushing, so he turned in front of me and it looked like my fault. We stumbled over each other and in the confusion he pushed my off shoulder and sent me down on my back in a narrow alley behind some trash cans. He came down on top of me. I automatically reached up to break his fall, embarrassed by my own clumsiness. Then I saw the look in his eyes. more tomorrow

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

That’s how I came to be sitting on the back bumper of the Pinto wagon with the gate up, in dubious shade. The day was hot, nearly one hundred, with an oceanic heaviness to the air that is unusual for California. Brassy blue sky, cougar colored grass, pale dusty live oaks throwing dark pools shade. I was fifty yards from the nearest tree. Under that tree was a forest green pickup. In the back of the pickup, Ed was waiting with a rifle. Further up the valley, Barton sat on a folding chair outside the panel truck with a rifle across his knees. I had talked Cabral into waiting inside, out of sight.

Davis arrived in a Lincoln Town Car. It pulled up in a swirl of dust and lurched to a stop. A lean young black man got out from behind the wheel. Despite the heat, he was wearing a 49ers windbreaker to cover his gun. He left the motor and air conditioning running and walked over to me. He circled the Pinto, looking in. I let him. Then he said, “Step away from the car.”

“Why?”

I knew why, but it was not the right time to let him think he could give orders.

“You want this meeting or not?”

Not needing to push the point, I walked away with him about twenty feet. 

He looked at me, and looked over my shoulder to where Ed had his rifle half raised. It was a touchy situation, and he was feeling it. He said, “I gotta search you.”

I nodded and he did a quick and efficient frisk. Then he said, “Wait here,” and went back to report that I wasn’t armed or wired.

In this slow, deliberate unfolding of negotiations, there was plenty of time for fear. Here was a man whose son I had killed. No matter how this meeting came out, I had business with him that would not be completed soon or easily.

The young man came back and said, “We are going to drive over by that tree. You walk over, okay?”

“No. You want to chose a spot where we won’t have a microphone planted. That’s all right. I expected that. But not out of rifle range.”

“You scared?”

“Don’t try to talk for yourself. You’re just an errand boy. Go ask your boss.”

“Look man . . .”

I spoke over him. “Don’t waste my time. Just trot on back over there and relay the message.”

He didn’t like it, but he took it, because he was an errand boy. A tough errand boy. He wasn’t scared of me. He might be scared of Davis.

I scrubbed my hands up over my face, pushing the sweat back behind my ears. My clothes were wet through and the sun was relentless. The driver got back in and drove up. The window on the back right went down with a low, electric whine and I got my first look at Cameron Davis. more tomorrow

Chapter Thirty-five

We sent a list of Cameron Davis’ properties to his house, with no note and no signature. That would get his attention. Another letter would follow, demanding a meeting. I went back to Eureka to wait. Ed got busy making arrangements to pull this stunt off without getting us all killed. Daniel Cabral flew back from France. 

Four days later, I met Ed in Garberville and followed him out of town. He drove toward the Davis mansion, then turned off a mile short and lead me by a narrow dirt road to where a panel truck was parked on a hill overlooking a broad valley. Oaks and a few redwoods were scattered across the landscape.

There was a dish antenna on top of the panel truck. A middle aged man with a rifle was waiting for us, relaxed but ready. He nodded as we approached and said, “I’m Barton.”

“FBI?”

“I’m on vacation.”

“Don’t you guys ever work for a living?”

He just grinned and motioned toward the truck. Ed and I went inside. Senator Cabral was waiting; he shook hands and said, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“I’m sure. Are you sure you should be here?”

“No. Politically, this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. But I’m not Richard Nixon. I don’t send people out to do things I wouldn’t do myself.”

I had to admire that. He had a lot more to lose than I did. But maybe he had even more to gain. “You should at least stay in the truck,” I said. “It doesn’t make any sense for you to talk to Davis face to face. We are here to use leverage on him, not give him a lever to use on you.”

“I will let you begin the meeting. If Davis sends a messenger, send him away. If Davis actually shows up, I want to see him.

“Ed,” Cabral added, “please step outside for a moment.”

Wilkes nodded and withdrew. The Senator studied me for a minute, then said, “Ian, why are you doing this?”

I shrugged. It wasn’t something I wanted to talk about. I just said, “For Raven.”

“Even though she ran off on you?”

I nodded.

“Do you love her that much?”

“God damn it, is this the right time for this conversation?”

“I am her father,” he said simply.

There wasn’t much I could say to that, except, “I love her.”

“Enough for this?”

“Enough to protect her.”

“And to live with her?”

“For as long as we could stand each other. I don’t know if that would be a week or a lifetime.”

“She needs you,” he said. “She may run from you, but she needs you. Those pasty boys she finds . . .” He made a gesture of disgust. “They are not enough for her. She needs more. She needs a genuine man; a serious man. A man of honor.” more tomorrow