Christopher's Ghosts by Charles McCarry

Author:Charles McCarry [McCarry, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery, Suspense, FIC006000, FIC031000, FIC037000
ISBN: 9781468300284
Google: Q9Bcw2u2rJEC
Amazon: B007IFZRGC
Barnesnoble: B007IFZRGC
Goodreads: 16444463
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2007-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

He handed the telegram to Elliott. He scanned it and handed it back.

“This sounds like they’re all right,” Elliott said. “O. G. is bearing messages, too, he said. He wants to pass these on before dinner.”

“I’d like to reply.”

“You can phone it to the cable company from the house. But talk to O. G. first.”

Elliott did not ask who Irma was. No doubt O. G. had already told him.

Paul said, “Have you and my father ever impersonated each other?”

“Not for years,” Elliott replied. “But maybe there are possibilities for the future. Now come and meet your new second cousin.”

Elliott’s wife Alice had presented him with a son. The child was now about a year old, and there would never be any doubt about his paternity. His name was Horace, after his mother’s father. Sitting in his high chair, being fed liquefied vegetables, Horace was the small triplet of Hubbard and Elliott. He had their horse face, their all-encompassing grin, their interested eyes. Among friends and family, Alice was noted for her wit. “I never expected to produce a child who resembles Seabiscuit so closely,” she said. “But I had got so used to looking at Elliott that he had begun to seem quite handsome. Long engagements dull the senses.”

“Horace looks fine to me,” Paul said.

The child took a liking to Paul. With a glad cry he made a grab for him with spinach-smeared hands, leaving a stripe of green on his sleeve.

“The mark of Horace,” Alice Hubbard said.

In his bedroom Paul read his parents’ cable again and again. He understood everything that was written between the lines. They had been taken into custody on the day he departed, and so had Rima, so that nothing would interfere with Paul’s departure from Germany. In some part of his mind, Paul had known this before he left Berlin. He had left Berlin because he knew it and understood it. Even if he remained—especially if he remained—he would not see them again. This situation made no sense. It was designed to make no sense. Senselessness was the point. Here in his cousin’s house three thousand miles away, sirens shrieked outside the windows as if America was the police state, Paul lay down on his bed and forced his brain to stop its inquiries. His brain answered this command by producing images of Rima that were as elusive as her reality was becoming.

Elliott pounded on the door of Paul’s room, awakening him from a deep sleep. “Awake or starve!” Elliott shouted in his courtroom baritone.

In the library Elliott and O. G. were drinking fifteen-year-old single-malt scotch whisky. O. G. was a connoisseur of scotch. As Paul entered the room, he was telling Elliott that another war in Europe was inevitable. The German army would be in France before the harvest was in.

“The experts say the Maginot Line will stop them,” Elliott said.

“Generals are always preparing for the last war,” O. G. said in French. “The Hun will go around those pillboxes with their Panzers and Stukas and take Paris in a matter of days.

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