The Quest for Anna Klein

At other times, however, he’d remember them standing somewhat farther apart, Bannion with a scrap of paper in his hand, one he quickly —rather too quickly? — sank into the pocket of his jacket as Danforth approached. In this remembrance, Anna reaches for the paper and then hastily —too hastily? — draws back her hand so that it is covered by the folds of her long, black skirt.

But in every recollection of this moment, the two of them, Bannion and Anna, would turn toward him smoothly and in unison, both with oddly drawn faces whose expressions would seem to him, in countless grave reenactments, like those of lovers plotting murder.

“Hello, Tom,” Bannion said.

He had been in England when he’d received their message of Christophe’s murder, Bannion told him, and of their subsequent flight to Orleans. Clayton had dispatched him immediately with orders to find out if Christophe’s death had entirely compromised the Project and, if it had, what steps should be taken.

“We could certainly attempt to carry on with our earlier plans,” Bannion added. “But Anna tells me that you two have been thinking of something much more . . . grand.”

“Yes,” Danforth said.

“I’m not sure Clayton would approve this new idea,” Bannion said.

“Perhaps it’s not up to Clayton,” Danforth said.

“A rogue operation?” Bannion asked. “I wouldn’t try it if I were you.”

Cautioning though Bannion’s remark was, he seemed to understand that a great plot was like a huge stone: once in motion, it took on a direction and velocity of its own, the plotters forever running in front of it while it closed in on them from behind, urging them forward and forward until, at a certain point, they feared their own failure to act more than they feared the consequences of their action.

“But if Clayton goes along,” Bannion added, “then we can begin to make our plans.”

With that one remark, his use of we and our, it seemed to Danforth that Bannion had insinuated himself into what had been a league of two. It was as if he had barged into an intimate conversation and then proceeded to dominate it.

“This will have to be a very tight circle,” Bannion said. He looked at Anna. “But yes, it is worth doing, I think. And I can probably persuade Clayton to approve it.”

So it was really going to happen, Danforth thought; they were going to do it. Up to that moment, the actual attempt had seemed distant in the way that all peril seems distant until it is upon you. But now he saw that the spiral was tightening, that it was very, very serious, the game no longer a game, and he was reminded of a line from Bion he’d once had to memorize in the original Greek: Though boys throw stones at frogs in sport, the frogs die in earnest.

He said none of this as they walked to the hotel, where only days before he’d sat at the little desk in his room and written several letters to business associates in Berlin. He was seeking African antiquities he’d told them, particularly items acquired from Germany’s former colonies in east and southwest Africa. He’d made it a point to express his displeasure with Germany’s loss of these colonies, along with “other confiscations of Versailles.” At the time, this had seemed very far from the carrying out of an assassination, though it had no doubt moved the plot along. Now the letters seemed little more than props in a high-school play.

At the hotel, Bannion shook their hands, then said, “I’ll be back after I’ve talked to Clayton. If he goes along with this, I can get us some very useful information.”

With that, he left them so quickly he seemed hardly to have been there at all.

Danforth glanced toward the small outdoor cafe next to the hotel. “Would you like some tea?”

“Yes,” Anna answered.

Once seated, she drew the scarf from her head and let her hair fall wildly, now reaching all the way to her shoulders, a gesture that seemed intimate and that Danforth would later believe she had made on purpose, creating a mood she then used — was it cunningly? — to reveal more of herself to him.

“Did Mr. LaRoche ever mention Baku?” she asked.

“Yes,” Danforth said. “He talked about how beautiful it had once been and about what the Bolsheviks did to it.”

“My father once took me there,” Anna said. She smiled. “I was very young at the time, but Baku is a place that leaves lifelong impressions. I remember roasted cumin seeds and the sacks of spices, turmeric, how yellow it was in that sun.” The smile dissolved. “And the caravans,” she added. “Some had come all the way across the Caucasus Mountains. The animals looked so tired. I remember feeling very sorry for them.”

“How long were you in Baku?” Danforth asked.

“Only a day or so,” Anna answered. “Then we returned to Erzinghan.”

The name itself returned Danforth to one of the darkest of his father’s tales. “Erzinghan? In Turkey?” Danforth asked.

“I was born there,” Anna said.

Danforth felt the horror fall over him. “Erzinghan,” he said softly.

She noticed the glimmer in Danforth’s eyes. “You know about it then?” she asked.

“Yes,” Danforth said. “One of our buyers had been there. He said that near Erzinghan, at a bend in the Euphrates, the river had become so clogged with the dead, it briefly changed its course.”

“Those were terrible times,” Anna said. She thought a moment, and while she thought, something in her eyes deepened and darkened, as if she were moving backward into a dimmer light. “I’ve been thinking about them a lot in the last few days.”

“Why?”