little spy or compelled to reach for something larger than he’d ever dreamed of. The latter prospect seemed so fantastical and at the same time so alluring that he felt its dark attraction as a kind of lust.
~ * ~
Century Club, New York City, 2001
“Lust?” I asked.
Danforth nodded. “A lust to matter. To do something that mattered.”
“But surely you knew that what Anna was proposing was completely insane,” I said, no less stunned by Anna’s suggestion than Danforth must have been when he first heard it.
“Insane, yes,” Danforth admitted. “And to think that the idea began to germinate practically within sight of that little Fascist Deloncle.” He took a sip from his glass. “It was the Gestapo who killed him, by the way.”
“The Gestapo?” I asked. “Why would the Germans want Deloncle dead?”
“He had gotten a little too close to the Abwehr,” Danforth answered. “There was always a great rivalry between Hitler and the German army.”
With this, Danforth dismissed any further discussion of Eugene Deloncle’s death.
“But we had taken a step,” Danforth said. “And I have to confess that for all the fear and dread, there was also a feeling of. . . passion. Very physical. It was as if a beautiful woman had walked into the room, strolled over to me, slipped a knife into my hand, nodded toward some fat old minister of state, and whispered, ‘Kill him and I’m yours.’”
I stared at Danforth, genuinely aghast that a history-transforming act could be reduced to so primitive an instinct.
“That’s what you must factor in, Paul, the narcotic effect of plotting a stupendous act,” Danforth added. “It produces a kind of sustained ecstasy.”
I couldn’t help but wonder how long Danforth had felt the erotic effects of this narcotic before reality swept in and set him straight.
“Ecstasy, yes,” Danforth said, and with those words returned to his story, more tensely and a little more fearfully. But was it the fear a soldier might have as he moved into a region where enemy forces lurked? Or was it the fear of some old Lothario as he opened the door of a murderess’s boudoir?
“Ecstasy, but also terror at the very thought of what was in our minds,” Danforth said. His smile seemed to reflect the fate he’d glimpsed at that moment long ago. “But I knew that, despite all that, I would see it through to the end.” He glanced away, then back at me. “Strange, Paul, but for the rest of my life, when I thought of that moment,” he added softly, “I would recall the scent of almonds.”
~ * ~
PART IV
The Scent of Almonds
~ * ~
Century Club, New York City, 2001
“Why almonds?” I asked.
“Because that is the odor of cyanide,” Danforth said, and then he glanced around like a man either recalling the place where a murder had been committed or looking for a place where one might be carried out.
“We should leave here now, I think,” he said.
I looked toward the window. “But it’s still snowing quite hard,” I warned him.
He smiled at a young man’s alarm that an old one should venture out in such weather. “I have learned to be sure-footed,” he said. His face took on that familiar expression of an old man teaching a young one the rules of the road. “What do you think is the most important characteristic of a predator?” he asked.
I thought of the spider, still and silent in its web. “Patience,” I answered.
Danforth smiled. “Very good. And what is the prey’s most important characteristic?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
“Resignation,” Danforth said. “Which can only be achieved if the prey understands the purpose of its death.”
“You’re speaking in human terms then,” I said.
A hint of cruelty glittered in Danforth’s eyes. “I am speaking, Paul, of revenge.”
With that he rose in a way that made him seem already somewhat ghostly, a dark cloud, but a cloud nonetheless, as if he were no longer entirely alive because at his great age he was so very near to death.
“Come,” he said. “I have a quiet spot in mind.”
The spot wasn’t very far, as it turned out, though we’d accumulated a fair amount of snow on the shoulders of our coats before we got there.
“The Blue Bar,” he said with a nod to the awning up ahead. “In the Algonquin Hotel. You must have heard of the Algonquin?
“Yes, of course,” I said. “The Round Table. Those famous wits. Dorothy Parker and —”
