The Quest for Anna Klein

languages. But you will have only one life, he thought suddenly as he was driving into town, and then, with a sense of distress, he added, And perhaps quite a short one.

Years later, as he stood in the bombed-out remains of Plotzensee Prison, Danforth remembered these thoughts, the way they’d come to him on the drive into town, and it occurred to him that love is, at bottom, simply the deepest of all sympathies, and that perhaps his love for Anna had begun the morning he’d watched her by the window and thought of all the immigrant girls like her, the arduousness of their labor, their limited prospects, and seen Anna as somehow their representative in his life. Still later it had been her tenderness that called to him, as he remembered on that same bleak occasion, the shattered walls of the prison perfectly symbolic of his own shattered life; after that it had been her resolve that drew him, and following that, her sacrifice, so in the end it seemed impossible that a love built on such a multifarious foundation could ever crumble and then boil up again as ire.

He reached the town in a few minutes. It was moving at its customarily slow pace as he drove down its single main street. There was a grocery store and a gas station, along with a clothing store and a five-and-dime. The town was typically American, quiet for the most part, and very neighborly. Danforth thought of the moment he’d committed himself to Clayton’s project and allowed himself to believe that by giving himself to that effort — even if only by providing small assistance — he was doing something to preserve and protect this little town and all the others like it. It might even be enough, though this possibility paled when he thought of Anna, the deadly skills she was being taught and would at some point employ. Providing a country house for her training was hardly at the same level.

The bandstand was surrounded by a small park, and as he approached it, Danforth saw a man in a brown jacket make his way toward it from the opposite direction. The man wore a dark hat pulled down low, like the figure he’d seen outside his apartment window, and Danforth felt certain that it was, in fact, the same man.

“So, French Impressionism,” Danforth said when he reached him.

The other man appeared darkly amused. “These little games will seem silly to us one day.” His tone was nostalgic, as if, like Anna, he too had already glimpsed his fate. He offered his hand. “I’m Ted Bannion.”

Bannion, Danforth thought, an Irish name. Unlike LaRoche, this man seemed well suited to his name, with his light hair and blue eyes, along with something in his manner that made it easy for Danforth to picture him in the execution yard of Kilmainham Gaol, shoulder to shoulder with Connolly and Pearce.

“Clayton has never mentioned you,” Danforth said.

Bannion plucked the sprig of lavender from the lapel of his jacket and tossed it onto the ground, as if to demonstrate his distance from such foolish trappings.

“I’ll be in charge of Anna once her training is finished,” Bannion said.

“She’s being trained for lots of things, it seems,” Danforth said cautiously, hoping he might get some hint as to what the Project actually was.

“So that she can train others,” Bannion said by way of explanation. His smile was bleak. “Our Joan of Arc.”

This seemed a hint that the Project was much broader than Danforth had previously imagined, Anna not one of a small cadre but the spearhead of a large force.

“Train them in several different languages,” Bannion added.

His accent was very faint, Danforth thought, and it seemed layered with other inflections, like a voice behind a mask.

“That’s her greatest asset,” Bannion said.

“Not her courage?” Danforth asked.

Bannion shrugged. “There’s never a shortage of courage,” he said. “It’s skill that’s hard to find.” He appeared sad that this was the case, that humanity was very good at meeting danger, very poor at knowing what to do about it. A realization of this fallen state, mankind nobly brave but helplessly incompetent, swam into his eyes, and Danforth thought it gave him the look of a disappointed god.

“Where did you meet Clayton?” Danforth asked.

“At one of his talks at the library,” Bannion said. “He seemed to think that the wealthy had an obligation to do something. I had an idea of what that might be.”

“I still don’t know what the Project is, by the way,” Danforth told him.

“With any luck, you never will,” Bannion said flatly.

“It’s very ambitious, I’m sure,” Danforth said. “Clayton’s not one for small measures.”

“Very ambitious, yes,” Bannion said, clearly refusing to reveal any part of the Project. “Has he told you that I was a Communist?”

“No.”

“Oh, yes, I was a great singer of the ‘Internationale,’” Bannion said with edgy bitterness. “One of those kind of Communists.” He appeared still seared by the experience, a man cheated by a clever swindler. “I wasted years of my life marching under that banner.” Those lost years were obviously a source of deep resentment; Bannion seemed raw and charged with violence, a man who’d caught the only woman he had ever loved sleeping with another man. “Clayton prefers people whose gods have failed,” he added.

“What god failed Anna?” Danforth asked.

To that question, Bannion gave the saddest answer Danforth had ever heard.

“Life.”

Danforth felt that this was true and wondered if it was in this terrible failure she had found the steeliness he saw in her.

“Anna’s going to be brought in earlier than we thought,” Bannion told him. “Clayton wanted me to tell you this in person. So that we could meet. You won’t have further dealings with her once she leaves for Europe.”