Betrayals by Carla Neggers

Author:Carla Neggers [Neggers, Carla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIRA
Published: 1990-11-15T23:00:00+00:00

The sun, breaking through the clouds, glistened on the rain-soaked lawn in front of the Massachusetts State House. Thomas held his umbrella in his left hand, using it as a sort of cane as he studied Jean-Paul Gerard. War and time—and his own stubbornness—had left him ravaged and old and mean, a shadow of the carefree, daredevil young race-car driver he’d been thirty years ago. Thomas didn’t find it easy to look at a man who’d suffered as much, and as needlessly, as had this relentless Frenchman. Yet he still could see Gisela in the soft brown of the younger man’s eyes, in the shape and sensitivity of his mouth, and he wondered if he was being too harsh or if, at least, there was hope.

“I want him to be happy, Thomas,” Gisela had said. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

She had been so proud of her only child. Nevertheless—and Thomas had never understood why—she had persisted in her refusal to acknowledge him as her son. She maintained that Jean-Paul preferred to shroud himself in mystery, pretending that he’d come from nowhere and letting people—women, especially—fantasize about his origins. It was a part of his mystique. That he was the illegitimate son of a popular woman who claimed she was a displaced Hungarian aristocrat certainly would have had its romantic side. Only after they were both gone, Gisela to her grave and Jean-Paul to Sidi Bel Abbès and the Légion étrangère as a fugitive, did Thomas consider that it was perhaps Jean-Paul who was protecting his mother, not the other way around. For the popular young Frenchman had to have known that telling the world he was Gisela’s son would have stimulated a scrutiny to which her life couldn’t have stood up.

“You’re an old man now, Thomas,” Jean-Paul said with unmistakable satisfaction. “Are you starting to smell the dirt in your grave?”

“I don’t believe I’m as old as you yourself are, Jean-Paul. You’ve had a hard life. I’m sorry.” He added softly, “Gisela never wanted that.”

“Don’t give me your pity, old man.”

“Consider it commentary, not pity.” Thomas felt himself tiring already and put more weight on his old, sturdy umbrella. “She won’t give you the stones, will she?”

Jean-Paul’s eyes—so suspicious now when once they’d been eager, trusting, filled with an unshakable zest for life—narrowed as he considered Thomas’s words. “I haven’t even seen her.”

“I don’t believe you, Jean-Paul,” Thomas said quietly, giving him a small, sympathetic smile. “You’ve never been an adept liar. Perhaps if you’d recognized this many years ago you’d have saved yourself—and others—a good deal of anguish.”

“And you? Think of all the anguish you’d have saved if you’d thrown yourself into the Mediterranean thirty years ago instead of Gisela.”

Thomas looked at him. “I have.”

Jean-Paul clenched his fists at his side. “I want the Jupiter Stones, old man. Nothing more. They belonged to Gisela, and I intend to get them back. Don’t try and stop me.”

“You can’t beat her. You of all people should know that.”

“I’m not trying to beat her.

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