The Scarlatti Inheritance(131)
“Easy, Andy. Easy.”
“Why?… For him?… Look at him. He’s practically dead.… He doesn’t even have a face.”
“Stop it!” Ulster Scarlett’s shrill voice reminded Canfield of that long-ago room in Zurich. “Stop it, you fool!”
“For what? For you?… Why should I?… I don’t know you! I don’t want to know you!… You left a long time ago!” The young man pointed to Canfield. “He took over for you. I listen to him. You’re nothing to me!”
“Don’t you talk to me like that! Don’t you dare!”
Canfield spoke sharply. “I’ve brought April Red, Kroeger! What have you got to deliver! That’s what we’re here for. Let’s get it over with!”
“He must understand first!” The misshapen head nodded back and forth. “He must be made to understand!”
“If it meant that much, why did you hide it? Why did you become Kroeger?”
The nodding head stopped, the ashen slit eyes stared. Canfield remembered Janet speaking about that look.
“Because Ulster Scarlett was not fit to represent the new order. The new world! Ulster Scarlett served his purpose and once that purpose was accomplished, he was no longer necessary.… He was a hindrance.… He would have been a joke. He had to be eliminated.…”
“Perhaps there was something else, too.”
“What?”
“Elizabeth. She would have stopped you again.… She would have stopped you later, just the way she stopped you at Zurich.”
At Elizabeth’s name, Heinrich Rroeger worked up the phlegm in his scarred throat and spat. It was an ugly sight. “The bitch of the world!… But we made a mistake in twenty-six.… Let’s be honest, I made the mistake.… I should have asked her to join us.… She would have, you know. She wanted the same things we did.…”
“You’re wrong about that.”
“Hah! You didn’t know her!”
The former field accountant replied softly without inflection. “I knew her.… Take my word for it, she despised everything you stood for.”
The Nazi laughed quietly to himself. “That’s very funny.… I told her she stood for everything I despised.…”
“Then you were both right.”
“No matter. She’s in hell now.”
“She died thinking you were dead. She died in peace because of that.”
“Hah! You’ll never know how tempted I was over the years, especially when we took Paris!… But I was waiting for London.… I was going to stand outside Whitehall and announce it to the world—and watch Scarlatti destroy itself!”
“She was gone by the time you took Paris.”
“That didn’t matter.”
“I suppose not. You were just as afraid of her in death as you were when she was alive.”
“I was afraid of no one! I was afraid of nothing!” Heinrich Kroeger strained his decrepit body.
“Then why didn’t you carry out your threat? The house of Scarlatti lives.”
“She never told you?”
“Told me what?”
“The bitch-woman always covered herself on four flanks. She found her corruptible man. My one enemy in the Third Reich. Goebbels. She never believed I’d been killed at Zurich. Goebbels knew who I was. After nineteen thirty-three she threatened our respectability with lies. Lies about me. The party was more important than revenge.”
Canfield watched the destroyed man below him. As always, Elizabeth Scarlatti had been ahead of all of them. Far ahead.
“One last question.”
“What?”
“Why Janet?”
The man in the chair raised his right hand with difficulty. “Him.… Him!” He pointed to Andrew Scarlett.
“Why?”
“I believed! I still believe! Heinrich Kroeger was part of a new world! A new order! The true aristocracy!… In time it would have been his!”
“But why Janet?”
Heinrich Kroeger, in exhaustion, waved the question aside. “A whore. Who needs a whore? The vessel is all we look for.…”
Canfield felt the anger rise inside him, but at his age and in his job, he suppressed it. He was not quick enough for the boy-man beside him.
Andrew Scarlett rushed forward to the overstuffed chair and swung his open hand at the invalid Kroeger. The slap was hard and accurate. “You bastard! You filthy bastard!”
“Andy! Get back!” He pulled the boy away.
“Unehelich!” Heinrich Kroeger’s eyes were swimming in their sockets. “It’s for you! That’s why you’re here! You’ve got to know!… You’ll understand and start us up again! Think! Think the aristocracy! For you … for you.…” He reached with his slightly mobile hand to his inside jacket pocket and withdrew a slip of paper. “They’re yours. Take them!”