An Absence of Light

There was something about Geis’s sang-froid in the presence of so much death that made Graver take his words seriously. He raised his hand and turned and looked toward the hangar.

“Hold it,” he yelled. He turned to Geis. “If you’re CIA you’d better produce some proof. I’m not letting you take that money without some very convincing authorization.” He hesitated a couple of counts. “I mean it.”

Geis waved at the helicopter without turning around. “I’ll show you,” he repeated.

The door to the helicopter opened again and a man stepped out carrying a telephone and jogged over to them. He gave the telephone to Geis and then stepped back a few steps and waited. Geis pushed a button on the black instrument, listened a moment, and then said, “Put him on.” Then he handed the phone to Graver.

Graver took it and put it to his ear. “Hello,” he said.

“Captain, this is Neuman.”

“Casey? Where are you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What do you mean? What’s going on?”

“Well, they’re holding us somewhere.”

“You and Ledet?”

“Yeah.” Pause. “And Lara and Ginette Burtell.”

Graver almost dropped the telephone. His muscles went limp, as if he had been swimming for hours, as if there was nothing left in him or in them, no strength at all, just quivering muscle.

“I want to speak to Lara,” Graver said.

“I’ll see…”

Pause.

“Hello?” Lara sounded scared. That was immediately apparent It took only two syllables.

“Lara, are you okay?” Graver asked, fixing his eyes on Geis.

“Yes. Yes, we’re okay. They broke into the house…” She started crying, stopped, recovered her voice. “I’m sorry… God…”

They broke into the house? Graver’s throat tightened. Neuman was back on the line.

“We’re all right,” Neuman assured him.

“No one’s hurt…?”

“No, no, everything’s fine, nothing like that.”

“Okay,” Graver said. “Don’t worry. It’ll be all right. We’re working it out. Understand?”

“Yeah. Captain… ‘Geis’ is Strasser…” The line went dead.

Strasser.

The dumpy man reached out for the telephone, took it from Graver, and handed it back to the man who had brought it to them from the helicopter.

“You’re Brod Strasser?” Graver felt like a fool. He had seen no further into this nightmare than if he had been a kid. The surprise was debilitating. Not only that, he knew that Strasser would kill everyone he was holding if he thought he had to.

“There’s just a lot going on here that you don’t understand, Graver,” Strasser said.

“I have no doubt of that.” Graver was almost ashamed of his stupidity. He had risked everyone’s life. Somewhere along the way he had allowed himself to get sucked into a maelstrom of self-deception. Standing here, facing this powerful, disheveled little man. Graver suddenly realized how terribly wrong he had gone. Now this banal, dangerous creature was threatening four more deaths. Graver was appalled at what he had done.

“Do you know what Kalatis was doing?” Strasser asked. His voice brought Graver back to the moment.

“I assumed the two of you were robbing one more grave.”

“Well, there you have it That’s precisely why we’re standing here. We weren’t doing anything. Panos was taking all of this for himself. I’ve most certainly seen the last of Panos Kalatis. There’s a total of forty million dollars here. A little over. This was the last ‘collection’ of a series of collections that Panos has been making behind my back. He’s already gotten away with over”-Strasser paused and leaned forward toward Graver for emphasis, the hands of his short arms still jammed into his pockets-”one hundred million… in this deal. Our’ money, as it were.”

Strasser straightened up. “But he would have had one hundred and forty million if I hadn’t stopped the hemorrhage. I’ve got men running my interests all over the world, Graver. Sometimes they manage to steal from me for a long time before I catch them. Panos was better at it than most Silly bastard.”

“Was he burning his bridges? Is that why everyone died?”

“Well, not everyone. Tisler, Besom, yes, of course. Faeber, Gilbert Hormann, yes. But Burtell was working for me, and he was catching on that… he was being used.”

“That you weren’t CIA.”

Strasser gave a quick shrug.

“What about Sheck?”

“Oh, Sheck just happened… you know, to be in the wrong place, wrong time. That happens to people like Sheck. If it hadn’t been there last night, it would have been somewhere else another night.”

“Jesus Christ.” Graver couldn’t believe his ears.

“Kalatis,” Strasser said, shaking his head. “Things began to unravel. It’s too bad. There’s this concept, a bourgeois concept you find even in the most un-bour-geois-like people-Kalatis for example-this bourgeois concept, that a person oughtn’t to have to work all his life. That’s just a bizarre concept when you think about it. I mean, where does that come from? That’s what got Kalatis into trouble. He wanted this bundle to ‘retire.’ He just wanted to kick back and screw young girls the rest of his life.”