14, left 45, right 6, right 20. I remembered it all these years. And you know, as soon as I saw the room, as soon as I saw it was the one spot in the house that Aspen didn’t touch, I knew the combination wouldn’t have changed either. So ...
She had left as undetected and unnoticed as she’d arrived and now Sophie was here again. This time for her expected, official visit. The nurse answered the door before she’d even put her finger to the chimes. Now Sophie stood in front of Constantine Andros’s study again. This time the double doors were closed. Sophie thought she heard voices inside, but couldn’t be sure, although she knew Aspen was in there, and Kimberley, the half-sister she’d seen only once, and the lawyer. Him she knew.
“Stavros the Mortician,” Mom always called him. He’s been around forever. Before Aspen, even before Mom. He’s the one I have to watch out for. If anybody knows the bonds are gone, it’s him. And if anybody is going to suspect me ... him again. Just be cool, Sophie. Remember, you haven’t been in this room in twenty-four years. Don’t give them any reason to think otherwise.
With one knuckle extended, Sophie tapped very timidly on the door.
“Come in! We’re waiting!” Stavros’s gravelly voice came through the doors.
Sophie tugged hard several times at the lion’s head on the left door.
“The other door!”
Good start! It’s obvious I don’t know which of the doors is used.
Greetings followed under a thin veil of politeness.
Aspen spoke. “It’s a wee bit late for it, but I was just about to make our afternoon tea, Sophia. May I include you?”
“Please.”
For heaven’s sake, don’t mumble! Be confident!
“Recognize anything, little Sophie?” Stavros asked.
Sophie bit her tongue. He was trying to be polite.
OK. Now be a bit overwhelmed. The memories are flooding back!
“The old moose ... is it still ...?” She turned almost a full circle. “Why, there it ... Was it always over the mantel? I thought it used to be ... no ... I’m not sure. This is so ... so strange.”
Keep looking around. Slowly, slowly. Stare a bit. Whatever you do, don’t stare at the A.Y. Jackson painting. The one that hides the wall safe.
“Ah, little Sophie, everything in here has been the same for thirty years or more. It’s got your father’s stamp.”
“Er ... where is my ... he?”
“Nurse is taking him out to the gazebo,” Kimberley explained.
“Nurse”! “Nurse” for heaven’s sake! As if this were a Victorian manor!
“We aren’t sure, but we think he still rather enjoys the birds.” The half-sister continued with more speculation on Constantine’s likes and dislikes, but Sophie wasn’t listening. As though she couldn’t resist the temptation, she went over to the bay window, perched sideways on the edge of the window seat and looked out to the gazebo, shading her eyes against the lowering sun to see better.
Yes, but does Nurse (“Nurse” ... gawd!) identify the birds for him. That’s what would make him really happy.
“... Before the most recent stroke a couple of years ago,” Kimberley was still talking as Sophie came back to the chair that had been set out for her, “he had the gazebo moved to the other side of the yard to get away from the traffic noises. There’s a lot of traffic now that the city opened the ...”
Why she’s as nervous as I am, prattling on like that. This is going to be easier than I thought, so just stay cool.
It was not until she saw Stavros staring at her that Sophie realized her mistake.
?
What did Sophie do that made Stavros realize she has been here more recently than twenty-four years ago?
Nobody Hides Forever
From the south, a nondescript brown sedan came into view on the two-lane highway and then eased off onto a lightly traveled secondary road forking to the east. Soon the car entered an area of thick forest and turned right again onto a narrow laneway leading up to a squat, gray building made of concrete block. The building was even more nondescript than the sedan, its monotony only slightly relieved by a metal garage door and, above it on a second floor, a window of thick plate glass.
Behind the window, Norm Upshur lowered the binoculars he had been using to follow the progress of the car. He watched intently as a very large man in mechanic’s coveralls got out of the back seat of the sedan on the passenger side. A frail man with tousled white hair got out right after him, followed by another large man in coveralls. The small man wore brown plaid trousers with a brown check. He had on a plaid shirt under a thin, two-tone windbreaker, and cheap running shoes. Old man’s clothes. At the sound of the garage door opening, the three men disappeared into the building, and the car went back down the dirt road into the forest.
Norm set the binoculars on the window ledge. “So that’s Lazlo Bovic?” He stared out at the trees for a few thoughtful seconds before turning behind him to a man sitting on an upturned crate in front of a makeshift desk. “Hard to believe that little old man is the Butcher of Vojvodina. In fact, Harland, now that I’ve seen him, I have to tell you I’m even more unconvinced.”
Harland Stohl had the kind of face on which a smile would look out of place. True to form, he scowled and said, “That’s Bovic. And he’s been living in this country since 1947. According to our data ...”
“Your data, Harland, with all due respect, have gotten us into trouble more than once.”
“Then take a look for yourself.” Stohl was unperturbed. “Start with this photograph. We have others, taken since he came here in ’47, but this one is earlier. From his days in Croatia during the war. The only one we know of. We got it from an old woman in Bosnia.”
“See, Harland, there we are to start with. That old woman who gave you the picture ... she’s actually a Bosnian Serb, isn’t she? That makes her no friend of the Croats, I’ll grant you, but then she’s no friend of ours, either! What does she have to gain by exposing him? The Serbs committed war crimes of their own!”
Stohl carried on with no sign of impatience. “The Balkans,” he said, and shrugged as if that explained everything. When Upshur didn’t respond, he added, “Serbs and Croats have been fighting each other for a thousand years, but every once in a while they let bygones be bygones and get together to gang up on Bosnia. Maybe her motive is some political one we don’t understand yet.”
He shrugged again. “Or maybe it’s religious. The woman is a Catholic like Bovic, but she’s Orthodox; most Serbs are, those that aren’t Muslim. Bovic, like most of the Croats, is Roman Catholic.” He sighed very softly, as though he’d had to slog through this explanation many times before. “Usually, in the Balkans that’s all the reason you need, but in this case I think she’s turned him in because she’s a dyed-in-the-wool communist, an old partisan. Probably has something to do with the war. World War II, I mean. They’re about the same age, her and Bovic.”
Norm bent over slightly, trying to look into the other man’s eyes as if they held the key to sorting out his uncertainty. “And old Bovic downstairs,” he said, “if he really is Bovic, was a leader of the ustashi, poster boys for the Gestapo and the SS. For the ustashi, slaughtering communists – partisans – was almost a religion.”
Harland shrugged