Hemingway's Notebook Read Free

You have owed me for a long time.” And this time, there was no smile and the voice was so quiet that it cut through the din of traffic along the Avenue.
    “Both of you are in it now. I mean, I know you’re not dead, don’t I?”
    “She’s not part of this, Ready.”
    “I’m afraid that can’t be avoided. I wouldn’t wait for the train from Geneva. She might not be on it.”
    And then the cold filled Devereaux the way it did in the old days, in the Section. The cold found every empty place in him and settled into him until it became a comfort to him. Rita Macklin would not be on the train from Geneva.
    Ready shrugged as though he might apologize. “I need leverage on you, Devereaux. It’s nothing to do with her but it has to be her, you understand that. You know how it is.”
    “Where is she?”
    “Let’s just say she’s not on the train from Geneva. Let’s leave it at that for the moment and then we can talk about her and about other things,” Ready said.
    “Where is she?”
    “In a little while, Devereaux,” Ready said. “You know how it is. Everything in time.”
    And Devereaux did not speak. He could not answer that. He knew how it was. How it always had been in the old game.

3
T HE O UCHY F ERRY
    Devereaux and Colonel Ready walked down a narrow cul-de-sac off the Rue St. Martin. They were in the old quarter of Lausanne, in a nest of streets that straggled down the hill from the cathedral and from the university building. They came to a five-story building of gray stucco with small balconies and tall, mournful windows, shuttered against September though the day was still calm and warm. In the summer there were concerts under the trees in the courtyard of the cathedral and the students from the university sold bratwurst and thick bread and plastic cups of beer. Children had played under the trees. Rita Macklin and Devereaux would listen to the music from their balcony window in the gray building all during that beautiful, lingering summer.
    Devereaux turned the key in the lock of his apartment door and opened it. Ready said Rita would not be there and he knew she would not be there but still he expected her when he opened the door. He had bought her flowers and they stood in a bowl on the table near the French windows.
    Ready had it all figured out. He’d given Devereaux orders:
    “We’re going to catch the two o’clock ferry to the French side. You’ll need your passport.”
    Devereaux passed through the rooms of the small apartment. He opened the dresser drawer and took out his blue American passport. She was everywhere. He could hear her voice in the silent rooms.
    He went into the bathroom, closed the door, and flushed the toilet. While the water ran out of the bowl, he lifted the lid from the water tank and removed a pistol from a holster that was glued to the underside of the lid. The pistol was black with a brown grip and was six inches long from front sight to firing chamber. It was a version of the Colt Python .357 Magnum which Devereaux had acquired years ago in R Section. He had not carried it all summer. But he had decided to keep the gun when he had been reported killed.
    Devereaux spun the barrel slowly. The bullets were seated in their cylinders. He carried a revolver instead of an automatic because an automatic could always jam. Once a week, when she was not there, Devereaux would break down the parts of the pistol and rub the dark metal with oil and the oil would leave a sweet smell in the room. Rita never saw him clean the pistol or reseat the bullets in the revolving chamber because he did not want to remind her of the old life or what he had been. There was only the smell of oil that lingered after he had put the pistol away. She never mentioned it.
    Devereaux put the pistol on a clip in his belt. They were going to take the ferry across Lac Léman to the town of Evian on the French shore. It was a quiet old spa town where old people came to cure themselves of age.
    Devereaux