Quest for Anna Klein, The Read Free Page A

said. “A very great skill. You must have many secret devices for spiriting objects of great value in and out of exotic ports of call.”
    â€œThat’s a rather grand way of putting it,” Danforth said, “but yes, we do.”
    The dinner progressed as it usually did, though it struck Dan-forth that Clayton often returned to the subject of the family business, the contacts Danforth Imports had throughout Europe, particularly in France and Poland but also in the Balkans,where, as Danforth rightly informed him, order could be found only after one understood the structure of disorder.
    They went through the courses and finished off the meal with yet another fiery display, this time baked Alaska. It was ten o’clock before they piled back into Clayton’s car for the drive up-town, where, some fifteen minutes later, Danforth and Cecilia at last found themselves alone in the lobby of Cecilia’s building.
    â€œCaroline’s frightened of everything,” Cecilia said. “I can’t imagine what Clayton sees in her.”
    Danforth shrugged. “Men like Clayton often marry women like Caroline. I don’t know why.” He laughed. “Stanley did, you know. The great explorer. His wife rarely left London, and she seemed mostly interested in hats.”
    Cecilia said nothing in reply to this, but Danforth could see that she was turning it over in her mind, a thoughtfulness he liked in her and that he considered important in the life they would live together. Had he been asked at that moment if he loved her, he would have said that he did, and he would have believed this to be true. Many years later, as he searched through old papers and followed distant clues, alone in rooms so spartan nothing hung from their walls, he would recall that once he had loved a woman named Cecilia and that if it weren’t for a single, decisive choice, he would have married her and lived his life with her. She would have been the full measure of what he knew of love, their life together a glass that — because he knew no other — he would forever have taken to be full.
    Finally, as if something about him had troubled her, she said, “You’re happy with me, aren’t you, Tom?”
    â€œOf course I am,” Danforth assured her.
    A few minutes later, in a taxi going home, he recalled that moment, and it returned him to his earlier life: how he and his father had traveled over the wildest terrains, eaten things that could scarcely be imagined, part of his training to run the fam-ilybusiness. Th e actual running of it had eased him into a far more comfortable world, however, and now those earlier times were like dreams from childhood or stories he’d read in a boys’ adventure book. Lately he’d begun to wonder if everything had been experienced too early, absorbed by a mind too immature to provide much resonance to the man he later became. In fact, on those occasions when he couldn’t prevent a certain uneasiness from creeping over him, he suspected that time was slowly dissolving all save the most harrowing episodes of those dramatic years — the stormy ferry ride to Cozumel, the wind that had nearly blown him off the Cliffs of Moher — and that since his youth he’d added nothing to his ever-dwindling store.
    He felt a familiar discontent and turned to work, his no less familiar route of escape. He’d brought the usual briefcase of papers home with him earlier that day, and he now set about going through them.
    He’d completed about half the evening’s tasks when the phone rang.
    It was Clayton.
    â€œDo me a favor, Tom. Go to your front window and look to the right, the northwest corner of Madison and Sixty-fifth.”
    â€œWhat?” Danforth asked with a faint laugh.
    â€œCome on, just do it.”
    Danforth put down the phone, walked to his front window, drew back the drapes, and looked out. The streets were deserted at that hour; he