Betrayal

Chapter 4

4

That his father was now gone, alas, having lain a mere fifty-one hours in the grave, gave Frank only the compensation of partly pulling his mind from that other painful connection with the past – Charlie’s death. It moved him in reminding him of the only other time that he had paid a visit, to that antiquated suburban corner of San Francisco that had spawned and spewed him forth, to die-cast him in his ever-lasting like-or-lump-it personal mould. Coming down from the university, back to the quaint little apple-blossomed hometown had given him a feeling of personal conquest. But where sadness of farewell filled the day, a drabness flowered over former familiarity, like weeds springing up and cluttering what had once been welcoming doorways. Thus he had been able to look down in a quiet satisfaction of completion. He did not recognise the town, any more than it recognised him, or failed to grant him recognition after it had once sent him away, a long time ago, to offer his life in service for his country. He had not felt alone or alienated in that strange town that day. Rather, he had felt an elating sense of freedom – of his having broken the chains of familial bonding – of having wiped away blemishing faults of the past. Or so he had thought then, watching the coffin’s slow descent. But that very lowering into the earth had mirrored that earlier coffin drawing out of reach forever, making him realise that the past was continually stalking him, a skulking predator snarling on his heels, its hunger increasing of late.

Laden with this morbid mood, it was thus through a whirling snow blizzard that Falzoni, after parking the car, tramped his way uphill, his form bent forward, to the town’s Sorjen Institute of Natural Studies. As far as he could judge, a place rarely visited by the common crowd but most avidly by that peculiar ‘absent-minded’ lot forever in search of something more extraordinary, like a mutant strain of banana with two left feet. A high spiked wall hid the select institute, except at the gateway, where the building leapt out in bright patches of red sandstone, to penetrate the grove of snow-sprinkled larches. The trees moved aside so that a forest of twisted chimney turrets took over, smoking heavily to recover the heat lost through the tall French windows. Where Falzoni churned the snow underfoot, he was able to deduce that the large building had reproduced itself in countless little red pieces covering the driveway and scattered up the stairs under the stone portico.

Scraping his soles on the iron frame to remove the snow, Falzoni pulled down on the heavy iron door handle and pushed open the heavier iron-studded oaken door. He entered the main hall, brushing under the tropical palms held in the grip of two grimacing Burmese jungle warriors standing beside two fiercer grimacing jade dragons. Teak parquets and raw sienna carpeting stretched out before him, with finely veneered wood panelling rising to the Renaissance ceiling’s frescoed pale-flesh frolics of naked nymphs. And shelves and shelves holding up a sea of dust-covered, time-forgotten, volumes visited mostly by the odd adventurous spider. Frank took in the room’s dull atmosphere, along with that unique smell of books quietly decaying all around him. It gave off a cool feeling, but not as cold as he’d been out there in the snow. Looking cooler in their redundancy, just like the books, the two suits of armour standing on both sides of the large crest emblazoning the balcony balustrade caught Frank’s attention. ‘Semper paratus – always ready,’ he said quietly, reading from the large shield. ‘Yeah, pal, I get it, no need to remind me,’ he muttered again quietly to himself. He stole a glance all round about, without looking suspiciously on guard. In this game, you could never be sure who was who, tailing you or not tailing you. Not unless any KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti) agent would be crazy enough to be sporting a Ku Klux Klan- style of tall conical mask headgear.

His inside started for a brief instant at the sight the woman’s face framed in profile against the light of the window. It reminded him of her for a moment, the surprise catching him inside. But the woman straightened up from her leaning position over the glass case, turning her head to reveal an entirely different person. His inner glow subsided. It wasn’t Charlie. She was dead. Killed by a bastard traitor double agent just doing his duty to protect what he supposedly believed in before fleeing to the safety of the Soviet Motherland. Now in game rebound, it was apparently Moscow’s turn to be betrayed by one of its traitors scheming to help the West.

The woman stepped away from the display cabinet with a slow unsure motion that quickened into the brisk official walk of a curator. ‘Kan jeg hjelpe deg’ The woman’s voice tried to convey a friendly tone, but didn’t manage to lose its official note completely.

Snapping out of his dark thoughts, Frank broke out in a wide smile, shaking his head politely. ‘Sorry, ma’am, I don’t speak your lovely lingo. In any case, I don’t think my tongue would curl round those cute vowels with quite as chic a click as yours does.’ And she was a chic chick in Frank’s eyes, in spite of the officious message that came across from her impatient fidgeting with those keys on the long gold-linked neck chain draped over and dangling from her generous bosom balcony.

‘Ah, American,’ she exclaimed. Did he detect a note of disdain in her remark?

Switching to English, she tried again. ‘Can I help you?’ Turning slowly, she swung an arm around, indicating the glass cases with their display of precious specimens.

Taking a quick step back, Frank gave a short laugh, declining the kind offer with a shake of the hand. ‘No, no, it’s okay; I’m just browsing – looking around at your super collection here. That’s awful kind of you. Thanks all the same.’ Turning away, whilst trying not to appear rude, he made his escape. She followed the American’s retreat with dagger eyes, her face creasing into a frown of disapproval. Another foreign tourist insulting the museum’s precious specimens by coming into the building simply to shelter from the inclement weather outside.

All the way from Lavik to Bergen in the back of Marley’s car, Frank had made a rough perusal through the CIA classified notes that Marley had loaded on him. Dropped off at a convenient suburban coach stance, a local bus had him arriving discreetly in the city with its picturesque image of yester-year multi-coloured wooden buildings. In his rented room in the town’s quiet district, he had spent the night running over dossier after dossier, field reports, recorded phone-calls and letters, until he felt that he knew him, in spite of the fact that he had not yet set eyes on the damn guy; none of our lot had seen the guy --- if it was a guy, or a dame. Nobody knew. Even with all the scant snippets of information collated by our agents spread over Europe and everywhere else outside of Russia, anything beyond what we now had was a total obscurity. It sufficed for the moment, to allot him the codename: COMPASS.

Tomorrow’s low-profile entrance, this time in Oslo, would let him see the guy face to face.

Now he was here in this gloomy mausoleum to meet this crazy phantom ‘Red’ Pimpernel, who was offering to tear a hole in the Iron Curtain, if you could excuse the pun. Taking a final checking sweeping glance around the room, Frank turned his attention on the broad staircase, walking with a determined step towards it, muttering: ‘Okay, pal, so let’s be meeting you, whoever you are; let’s put your invisible mug-shot in the frame.’