“Yes, Chubb workers do it hard on long months. What do you think the baby bulldozer was doing?”
The guard shrugged. “We figured they were going to start building the prison, except no one heard nothing on the grapevine. And after that one day, no one never came back.”
So, said Helen to herself as she unearthed her latest notebook, I now know that the kidnappers went to considerable pains to locate a cell for Kurt, and that they made their on-site preparations so far back that no one would associate two surveyors and a baby bulldozer with Kurt von Fahlendorf’s disappearance. On the night they drove in quietly and without headlights; the cars were hidden from the jail by mounds of rubble, and they’re undoubtedly not the only cars to use the area-it’s a great place for steaming up the windows. Kurt was unconscious when they arrived, and they were probably not there longer than ten minutes. Holloman Jail isn’t a high security institution. Its wall guards are slapdash unless there’s genuine trouble, when they snap to attention efficiently enough, the Captain says.
One of the two surveyors was a woman; women occupied all kinds of jobs these days, the first guard said. Indeed they do, sir! Look at me.
Her journal was open, her colored pens arranged; Helen began to write, quite a lot of it in purple for her own theories.
At six o’clock she rang Kurt’s bell, laden with Chinese food and a jeroboam of French champagne; she had decided that the huge bottle was more seductive than several ordinary ones, which had to be opened-a noisy procedure with champagne. The jeroboam meant one kept on pouring from an open vessel.
Her first impression was that Kurt looked wonderful, rather than someone who had suffered over five days of imprisonment, most of it without water, all of it without food, and enduring pain as well as blood loss from a hacked off finger. His pale blue eyes were dancing with life; even his flaxen hair sparkled, and his tanned skin was smooth and supple.
It was no hardship to kiss those full red lips; Helen was tall enough not to need to stand on tiptoe for a near six-footer, and fitted her mouth into his with pleasure, if not with passion. Why wasn’t there any passion? That was something she wondered about a great deal without so far finding an answer. In all her life, she reflected, no man had ever stirred her to passion. She had never had an orgasm; M.M.’s children would have died sooner than masturbate. Auto-eroticism was hideously shameful; it was, besides, unnecessary. Somewhere in the world lay that elusive state called a climax. She could wait.
“Ice bucket, if it will fit,” she said, breaking the kiss. “Are you hungry? Shall we eat now, or heat the food up later and eat then?”
“Later,” he said, busying himself with an oversized ice bucket and then opening the bottle. “Is this designed to get us drunk?” he asked. “If so, I’m all for it, my beautiful Helen. I miss the days when you wore your hair loose, therefore I have no love for your police career. So I shall get you drunk and undo it.”
“Glass for glass,” she said with a challenge in her voice.
He poured; they toasted with clinking glasses.
“I know they’re going out of style, but I much prefer these saucers to the flutes,” he said, savoring the wine. “Neither you nor I has a big nose, admittedly, so we could drink comfortably from flutes, but think of those who do have big noses!”
“Good lord!” she exclaimed. “You have a sense of humor!”
“Of course I do.”
“Well hidden.” She sipped. “Oh, I do love champagne! And, Kurt, I can’t think of a better reason to wallow in a saucer than celebrating your liberation. You look so good!”
“I feel good,” he said.
“What went through your mind during those nearly six days?”
The handsome face hardly changed. “My life’s work. I had no room for anything else, and I never did finish. They have promised me a photographed wall-I do not know how else to say it, but I gather they connect each small photograph to those all around it in a way which makes it look like wallpaper. Then I can finish, and I will. I had never realized how important it is to have every single step of my research mathematically expressed as a continuum. I had reached within my last year, and so far I now
“Well, at least you’ve shown me where your priorities are.”
“In the proper place, yes.”
“So it wasn’t the specter of death loomed largest?”
“Yes-and no. I just wanted to get my work completed before I died. Work was more important, even if death was certain.”
“No wonder your colleagues admire you so much.”
“You exaggerate,” he said.
“No, I don’t. I’ve spoken to them throughout this business, and every last one of your colleagues is consumed with admiration for your passion-” She stopped, looked astonished. “Of course! That’s where the pass ion is! In our work!”
“You have lost me.”
“I know, and I’m going to leave you lost. Drink up, Kurt.”
Three glasses, she decided, were optimum for her purposes: Helen struck.
“Do you feel vengeful?” she asked as he took off her shoe and stocking; she had come garbed for seduction, no pantyhose.
“At this moment,” he said, dunking her forefoot in his champagne, “I am more concerned with limiting my drinking by sucking champagne off your perfect toes.”
She squealed and giggled. “Kurt, don’t! I’m ticklish!”
“Wriggle away. I love it,” he mumbled.
“Okay, but only for five minutes.”
At the end of the five minutes she counted him down to zero, then grabbed his ears and pulled his head up.
“Ow!”
“If you had longer hair, I could use that, but a crew cut means it has to be your ears. No, sit up, Kurt, and pay attention to me! I want to be serious for a moment.”
He obeyed, curiosity aroused. “Okay, my lovely Helen.”
“Do you feel vengeful about your kidnapping?”
“Yes,
“Do you have any ideas or theories about who did it?”
He looked puzzled. “No, not really. I was too consumed with writing my work on the walls.”
“I have some ideas and theories.”
He had reached for the jeroboam, but jerked his hand away. “No, I must not drink more. Tell me, Helen.”
“Captain Carmine Delmonico isn’t just another small-city policeman, Kurt. He’s a fine detective-fine enough for me to choose the Holloman PD for my training as a detective. He came to conclusions that I share. The first is that your kidnappers are German, not American.”
She had caught him; he was staring at her, confounded. “But that cannot be!
“Accept the fact that when it comes to crime, you’re a very ordinary guy,” Helen said. “Delmonico is the expert and I’m learning to be one. Believe me when I say that American kidnappers would have behaved differently from yours. And if they’re German, by extension they know you personally. Otherwise they wouldn’t have fixed on you, we think. With Baader-Meinhof running around in Germany, local kidnapping thinking would be going in quite a different direction. There’s also the fact that they knew when this trust fund for the grandchildren was going to be set up, and, compounding that, they have the pull to open an account with a prestigious Swiss bank. Riff-raff they’re not.”
“Josef,” said Kurt in the back of his throat.
