XVIII

Anne had been sitting stiffly in the wing chair in the parlor, waiting for Frederika's call. It was still dark, although she could see the first light changes of the coming dawn through the white curtains. The telephone rang twice, then stopped, the prearranged signal. She got up, put on her trenchcoat, and walked the deserted street toward Wisconsin Avenue, moving northward toward Calvert Street. A policeman standing in a doorway, sheltered from the wind, looked at her curiously. She stared him down with an arrogant glance and moved on, turning on Calvert Street, hearing the click of her heels on the pavement.

In the quickly growing light, she saw the patch of park, the row of benches, the line of leafless trees. Stopping, she leaned against one of them and waited, listening for footsteps, wondering if she had been the first to arrive.

"Anne." It was Frederika's voice, a low whisper behind her. Turning, she saw Frederika emerge from the back of a tree. Her lips trembled, although the cold was not that severe. Anne came closer.

"I have it," Frederika said.

"Where?"

She pointed to a package, wrapped in brown paper, lying on the ground. It looked innocent, makeshift, the twine knotted in a crude fashion.

"So small?"

"It is quite lethal. I have been assured of that." She looked at her watch. "It is set for 8:45 precisely."

"He is to meet me at the Riggs branch at exactly 8:50, as we agreed," Anne said.

They listened. An automobile's door clicked shut. Then, clearly, the sound of a woman's tread began. Looking toward the sound, they saw Marie moving quickly. Anne stepped out of the shadows to direct her. Marie was red-eyed, her hair awry, her face luminescently pale, almost transparent. A network of blue veins crawled beneath her skin's surface.

"I'm sorry. There was a scene."

"You weren't followed?" Frederika asked.

"No." She hesitated. "I merely said I would end it today, irrevocably. It was all so banal."

"You admitted it? You told your husband?" Frederika looked at her incredulously.

"I said it was brief. I said I would end it now. And that I would be home to see the children off. All very domestic. And quite silly. But it was expected. It is part of the role of the contrite cheat."

"Does he suspect Eduardo?" Frederika probed.

"How could he?"

Frederika shrugged. Anne watched their faces in the quickening light, wondering if her own reflected the same fear. She was surprisingly calm, although when she looked at the package on the ground, she felt a stab of sadness.

"There it is." Frederika pointed to it.

"So small?"

"Believe me. It will make a big bang. The person who made it is an expert."

"It is not traceable?" Marie asked.

"I told you. The man is an expert."

Marie shivered visibly. "Do you think.... "she began.

Anne supplied the unsaid words. "If only I could hate him," she said quietly.

"I don't think I can do it," Marie said, her voice cracking. "I am not conditioned to this. I don't think I can do it."

"You think we're conditioned to it?" Frederika said gently, touching Marie's shoulder.

"He said he was an aberration," Marie said. "An aberration of time and place."

"What did he mean?" Frederika asked.

"He was searching for your understanding," Anne said, her insight certain. "He was telling you he is different from other men."

"He is," Marie said pugnaciously. "We all know that."

"What does it matter?" Anne said. "What he is changes nothing."

"No.... "Marie said hesitantly. "I suppose you're right." Her shoulders dropped and her skin seemed to hang on her face, the aging process begun. "I feel like I'm about to go to prison," she said. "Without Eduardo life will be a prison."

"Don't you think you're so unique," Frederika said. "Do you think I can bear the thought of going through life without him?"

"Better half a loaf then," Anne said. She knew she was mocking them and herself. She wondered what they would carry in their memories, and felt her own resolve heighten. There is no other way, she told herself. And yet the plan had never been that definite. The act had been running on its own impetus. Frederika had agreed to find the bomb. She had assured them it would be simple to retrace old contacts, to find a person with this expertise. Terrorism had been institutionalized, and since money was of little consequence to Anne, the means were simple. The bomb had cost fifty thousand dollars. Frederika had merely handed over the bills to a bodiless hand in Baltimore and a voice had instructed her as to the timing device so that it would detonate according to plan. And Anne had, with a casualness that seemed so out of touch with the knowledge of herself, simply made the appointment to pick up the gold in the vaults of the Riggs branch on Dupont Circle. Marie had agreed to put the bomb in the back seat of his car. And they had decided that the moment of impact should take place as close as possible to the Chilean Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue. Simple steps. Simple devices. Hardly a conspiracy. So simple.

"And if we are caught?" Frederika had raised the question, but it had been on their minds.

"So we are caught," Anne said. What did it matter now?

"They are all quite stupid," Frederika had pointed out. "They will think it is the work of his enemies. The DINA."

"Instincts," Anne had said. "What are our instincts? We have all been betrayed by them."

They had parted then. It had been a brief meeting, casual. Three ladies meeting in a park in mid-afternoon, amid the baby carriages and the nannies and the young mothers gossiping on the benches. All so innocent. So pedestrian.

"If there are any second thoughts.... "Frederika asked now. Morning activity had begun in the area. They heard a car's horn honk, footsteps on the pavement. People were on their way to work. The city was rising.

"I don't have any," Marie insisted, now straightening, but the skin on her face remained slack. "I wish I could accept it as reality, but I can't."

Anne felt her own sense of impending emptiness, as if she were feeling the last grains of sand passing through the hourglass of herself. In a way the end of her life was coming as well. Perhaps the other women felt that, too. She could, she hoped, relive the moments with Eduardo, and perhaps that might sustain her in her remaining years. But she was already seeking ways to wash him out of her mind, to grip herself anew. The others were younger. They might find it easier, or harder, since there was statistically at least more time left to them. What had this man done to them? she wondered. Perhaps they should let him live, let him spread his joy. That was what it was, after all. Joy! But the thought of him being with other women was too unbearable to contemplate. It was the point of the exercise.

As she stood there in the chill, she felt the cast of her mind fix itself, like cement, and she was able to observe the two younger women from what seemed like a new perspective. It was passion reversed, forced in upon itself, that made it necessary to attack the life of Eduardo. Was it really only revenge? She wondered if she could touch the nub of hatred in her. What were they all but betrayed lovers? He deserved to die for disturbing what might have been tranquillity and acceptance.

"When you pick that up, Marie," Frederika was saying, "there will be no turning back. I am the only one who has seen a diagram on the method of unmantling it. Then it was destroyed. So you see there is no turning back." She repeated the phrase almost as if she was asking them to stop her. Marie began to fidget with her fingers as she watched the innocent brown-bagged package lying harmlessly on the faded grass.

It had been decided that Marie would put it in the back seat of his car. After all, she knew the geography, had been in the car.

"But only once," she had protested.

"Someone has to do it," Frederika said. "After all, I have done my part."

"And I will do mine," Anne said.

"Will it be swift?" Marie asked, still holding back from reaching for the package.

"As swift as possible. I have been assured of that," Frederika said.

"No pain?"

"What pain could there be in a millisecond?"

Marie wondered if it had occurred to either of them what was in her mind now. Suppose both of them could be eliminated? Would she then have a clear field. Possess Eduardo? Could such captivity be sustained, she wondered, dismissing the thought. It was impossible. The gloom of dawn disappeared and the edge of the sun showed its brightness over a distant point on the horizon, rising from between two large buildings.

"Well." It was Frederika's voice. She was looking at her watch. Then her eyes lifted and a look passed between the women. Anne saw the determination that lay there, in each of them.

"He has made me feel unclean," Frederika said, the words ejaculated like the dying croak of an animal gasping for breath. Then Marie moved, slowly, determined, and lifted the package from the ground.

"Bastard!" Marie cried, and Anne knew it was the most malignant curse that might be uttered. The sound of it congealed her own resolve.

"He is far from an innocent," Anne whispered, knowing it was the truth of it, or at least, what she wished would be the truth. And with him, Miranda would also die.

"I never want to see either of you again," Marie said. It was a mere hiss now. She held the package close to her breast as if it might be some casual purchase. "I will give him your message." She bared her teeth in a heatless smile, then turned and walked away, the sound of her heels on the pavement lingering in the air long after she had turned the corner. Frederika continued to look into the distance, then turning, rubbed the flats of her palms together, a gesture of completion.

"That's that," she said.

"No remorse? No guilt?"

"Not that much." Frederika held up her thumb and forefinger, the space between them narrow, illustrating the meager measure.

No love? Anne asked herself, but she could not bring the answer to her consciousness. There would still be some pain left for her. She had, after all, to confirm the meeting with him, to hear the last sound of his voice.

"If I see you on the street," Frederika said, "I will turn away. If you ever call me, I will hang up. As far as I'm concerned, you don't exist." The words came quick, practiced, and the eyes were misted, but it might have been from the cold. There was no requirement for answering. It was, indeed, over.

Anne was alone in the park now, standing under a leafless tree. A door slammed. A car horn honked. It seemed so ordinary. Why am I here, she wondered, briefly disoriented. Then she started to walk. It wasn't until she had reached her own street that she fully regained her sense of place.

The telephone rang at precisely seven, the agreed-upon time. He was quite precise when it came to these matters.

"It is all ready," she said, when he had acknowledged his identity.

"Then we will meet at 8:50 in front of the bank."

"Precisely," Anne said, looking at her watch. "What does your watch say?"

"Seven-thirty exactly."

"Yes," she confirmed.

"And I will see you tomorrow." He had not changed the pitch of his voice, and for the first time, she sensed its coldness, the calculation that lay beneath.

"Of course, Eduardo." She wondered if it mattered anymore. It is ended, she told herself. But when he had hung up, she seemed to amend the idea in her mind.

It was only after the sounds of Bach filled the house and her body muscles struggled to achieve the perfection of her exercises that she realized contentedly how far back she had put him in her mind.