An Absence of Light

At the time, the quote had lodged in his mind as a reminder of the consequences of the evils he had sworn to engage. It was an acrid and disconcerting irony, then, to find that “tyranny’s disease” was alive and well among the men who had dedicated themselves to opposing tyranny itself. The disease had invaded the physician, despite his skills and good intentions, despite his best efforts.

“This is too neat,” he heard himself say. He swallowed hard to dislodge the lump in his throat “I don’t understand,” he said, trying to sound terse and focused, “why Dean is giving all this up to us. Why, suddenly, at the last minute, is he spilling everything he knows-about Kalatis and Faeber, and especially about Geis? Why wouldn’t he ‘keep the faith’ with the CIA?”

For the first time Arnette had no response.

“All the loose ends are falling into place,” Graver went on, “but it’s all happening a little too late, isn’t it We’ve uncovered a wealth of information in record time, but Geis has evaporated, and we’re not a single step closer to Kalatis.”

“That’s right,” Arnette snapped back. “Look, Marcus, I don’t know how to answer your questions about Dean, but I do know he’s put us onto some very serious operations here. Yes, all the big players are disappearing into the woodwork. That’s what they’re trained to do. That’s their business. If they didn’t sew up loose ends, they wouldn’t be in business. But the fact is, Dean’s given us a hell of a lot more than we would have had without him. I’m not going to agonize about his ethics this late in the game. We’re not through here; we still need a lot of answers. I’m not going to blame Dean because he didn’t clear up everything for me. As for his role in this, you may never figure it out. Or if you do, you might not like it But does that really make a goddamned bit of difference as to what we do now?”

For a few moments the line was dead, no one spoke. Then Graver said:

“Okay, Arnette. You’re right” He paused again. “But for right now I’ve still got just one objective… and just one more chance at achieving it. Paula, can you glean anything else from the files?”

“Oh, sure,” Paula said. “There are a million details, stuff we can follow up on for months. As far as connections go, this is a bonanza.”

“Arnette,” Graver said, “you have no interest in the operational end here, I know. But if I get a shot at Kalatis can I get some backup from your people? Before you answer, you’d better know this: there’s not a dime in it.”

“I told you, I’m already making money off this, baby,” Arnette said. “You can have my people anytime. I’m way ahead of the game here.”

“Okay,” Graver said. “We may have a long shot I’ll get back to you within a couple of hours.”

Chapter 63

By the time Graver got to La Facezia, he was nearly twenty minutes late. He parked a half block away, locked the car, and walked back on the sidewalk under the shade of the catalpa trees, a welcome shelter from the mid-morning sun. The temperature already had climbed into the upper eighties and surely would not stop until it reached the mid nineties.

The tables under the arbor on the sidewalk were popular this morning, and the patio doors were thrown open so that the dining room was open to the shady cool. As Graver suspected, Last was not among the sidewalk coffee drinkers. He went through one of the iron gates, under the arbor, and into the dining room which retained a cavernous coolness, its three sets of French doors allowing a wash of arbor-muted morning brightness into the big room.

As Graver walked through one of the French doors that opened obliquely into the dining room, he paused a moment to let his eyes adjust from the glare of the street There were a few diners, and he could hear a murmur of conversation and the clinking of tableware. One of the waitresses whisked by him with a tray of coffee and croissants on her way to the sidewalk tables. “Please, anywhere you wish,” she said in passing, and following that he heard Last’s relaxed, mellow English.

“Right here, Marcus.”

Graver turned to his right and made out Last’s shadow ghost sitting at one of the more choice tables, next to a window with a thick stone sill. An iron grille covered the window and a lacework of ivy covered the iron, forming a delicate panel of privacy separating them from the tables outside like the screen in a confessional. Graver walked to the table and sat down.

“This is untypical,” Last observed. “So late.”

“I couldn’t help it,” Graver said. “You’ve seen the papers?”

“Oh yes. I gathered as much.”

One of the waitresses came and took Graver’s order for coffee.

“Okay,” Graver said. “Let’s hear it” He was in no mood for pleasantries, and he wanted Last to know that Last nodded.

“Of all the stuff I’d told you before,” Last said, “I left out something… rather central.”

“Really?” Graver couldn’t resist a note of sarcasm.

“What I didn’t tell you was, I’ve been boffing Mrs. Faeber almost from the beginning.”

Graver looked at him. “Okay.”