She hesitated. “I thought you did,” she said softly. “Everything that mattered. I thought-well, never mind what I thought.” She busied herself putting the pack in the car, then stood up, looking at him over the roof. “There is one more thing. I wasn’t going to tell you, but you may as well know. Maybe it will make a difference to you.” She hesitated again, still not sure. “Karl was-well, Karl was very good at what he did, you know. He knew things that even I didn’t know. Don’t ask me how.” He waited. “I suppose you can find out anything if it’s really what you care about,” she said to him with a wry half-smile. “He knew that Matthew was still alive.”
“I thought-”
“So did I. I’d no idea. You can see what that means, can’t you?” she said, her voice pleading. “I was frantic. Daniel only got out because of the marriage. Now he’s British.”
“You thought they’d send him back?”
“No, not then,” she said, her voice trembling. “We weren’t exactly sending trains into Berlin. But what about now? If the marriage isn’t real, what happens to him? Is he supposed to go back to Poland? I can’t let that happen to him.”
“They wouldn’t do that.”
“How do you know? I didn’t. So logical. I couldn’t be, don’t you see? I couldn’t think straight. All I knew was that Daniel would have no legal status at all and it was my fault. I had to do something.”
“So you went with him.”
“Yes, I went with him,” she said, almost shouting. “It always comes back to that, doesn’t it? I needed time. I thought after the war I’d sort it out-I couldn’t do it here. Besides, no one knew.”
“Except Karl.”
“Yes, except Karl. And now you. Michael, I’m asking you-”
“Don’t. Don’t ask me.”
She bit her lip again, her face resigned. “At least Karl-”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I can’t help it. I saved him once-I won’t let anything happen to him. I thought it all died with Karl. Do I have to buy you too? Or have you already had everything you want?”
“Get in the car.”
They drove up the dirt canyon road in silence, Emma looking out the side window, her face blotchy but dry. Connolly stared at the road, as if he could quiet the jumble in him with a grip on the wheel.
“You can have the marriage annulled.”
“Yes,” she said absently.
“How did Karl find him?”
“No more. Please.”
“How?”
“He’s here.”
Connolly almost stopped the car in surprise. “Here? On the Hill?”
“No. In the States. For years. Karl used to keep tabs on aliens who were friendly to the comrades. It was his specialty, remember?”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know. New York. He was, anyway. Karl lost track of him when he left Washington and all his precious files there. It shouldn’t be hard if you want to find him.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
“Did Karl tell him?”
“Karl didn’t know him. He was just a name in a file.”
“Does he know where you are?”
“Nobody knows where I am. I’m a post office number. Box 1663, Santa Fe. New name. New person.” She trembled again. “I got clean away, remember? A lovely new life.”
They were approaching the turnoff road for the west gate. “Let me off here. I’ll walk in.”
He looked at her. “Walk?”
“Yes, walk. Why not? I’m a great hiker, didn’t you know? I could do with a walk now. Besides, there’s my reputation to consider.” He stopped the car. “Well,” she said, not wanting to get out yet, “I’ll see you.”
“Emma, what you said before, about his not blackmailing you. There must have been someone else. There’s the money.”
She smiled sadly. “You never give up. What are you suggesting? That I gave him the idea? Is that my fault too? Once he saw how easy it was with me, he went on to better things? Maybe he did. You find out, Michael. I don’t care.” She opened the door, half getting out. “Will you put us in your report too?” When he opened his mouth, she put her fingers to his lips, barely touching them. “No, don’t say anything. I don’t want to hear it-it’s all in your face. Do what you have to do. I’ll just get out here.” She kept her hand on his face, a Braille touch, keeping him still. “I seem to have made a mess of things, haven’t I? You always want things to make sense. Sometimes they make sense and it’s still a mess.” She ran her fingers across his mouth as if she were kissing him. “It was nice for a while, though. Before it was such a mess. No, don’t say anything.” She dropped her hand and got out of the car, then leaned through the window. “You’d better go on first. It’ll look better.”
He sat there for a minute, not knowing what to say, and then it was too late. She had moved off to the side, starting to walk, and when he put the car in gear and saw her in the rearview mirror she was looking somewhere else.
